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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26010769">Sandman</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zavijah/pseuds/Zavijah'>Zavijah</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Overwatch (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Descriptions of Autopsies, Down the rabbit hole, Gabe-centric, M/M, Modern AU, Mutual Attraction, Mystery, Psychological Thriller-esque, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:53:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>31,537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26010769</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zavijah/pseuds/Zavijah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel, a sardonic medical examiner, has suffered from insomnia, among other things, since his near fatal car crash several years ago. After weeks of serving as an expert witness in a pressing court case during the day, and working long night shifts, a weary Gabriel finds himself questioning whether or not Jack, the handsome new medical investigator, is real or a hallucination.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>183</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gabriel woke, choking for air.</p><p>Jerking upright in his chair, he clutched at the edge of his work desk as he coughed and sputtered until he spat out a single blueberry into his palm. The plain walls of the morgue swam into view. Several more blueberries dotted the papers strewn across his desk and, when he pushed back a foot, more fell from his lap and rolled across the tiled floor.</p><p>The fog of sleep receded and Gabriel spun around, his tired eyes landing on his assistant, Hanzo Shimada, perched on a swivel stool several feet away, casually eating blueberries from a Tupperware dish.</p><p>Gabriel growled, “What did I say about food in the morgue?”</p><p>“To not eat over an open body,” Hanzo replied and tossed back a small handful of berries. He wore green scrubs, a pair of sneakers that were always impressively void of any blood spots, and his long, dark hair was neatly tied back. He brushed at his thin goatee before asking, “How was court?”</p><p>Nothing ruined Gabriel’s sleep schedule quicker than being forced out of his routine to serve as an expert witness to a high profile case. The ongoing Lacroix case, a starlet being accused of murdering her political husband, was becoming more of a realTV drama the lawyers and reporters were milking for all it was worth. Even though the evidence found during Gerard's autopsy had been sound, Gabriel doubted Amélie would ever see a day behind bars. The pursuit of justice was a joke, yet there he was, duty-bound to play his part while struggling to function in between increasingly sporadic cat naps.</p><p>Sighing, Gabriel brushed the rest of the blueberries from his lap as he stood and eased out of his jacket. He’d meant to change out of the suit and tie upon returning to the morgue, but once he’d sat down, exhausted, he’d passed out. “It didn’t happen.”</p><p>Hanzo’s hand stilled over the dish. “What do you mean?”</p><p>“One of the jurors didn’t show.”</p><p>“Intimidated?”</p><p>“Missing.” Gabriel checked his watch, grateful yet pained to know he’d been allowed to sleep an hour into his shift. “Sat on those god damn benches for hours while the police searched for him.” He tossed the jacket over the chair. “The trial got suspended.”</p><p>The dish of blueberries closed with a snap as Hanzo briskly crossed the room. Gabriel loosened his tie, frowning. Most often it was Hanzo that worked with the lawyers. They preferred Hanzo, given that he used to be one of them, but the Lacroix case was being handled by the Shimada Firm. Hanzo, other than being considered to have a ‘conflict of interest’ due to familial ties with the prosecution, wanted nothing to do with his father’s case. Yet he always pestered Gabriel for details, more so when a case wasn’t being handled to his liking.</p><p>“At least you can’t blame me.” Gabriel toed out of his dress shoes and began on the buttons of his shirt.</p><p>Hanzo tossed a pair of clean scrubs onto Gabriel’s desk. “How could I? You never made the stand.”</p><p>“We practiced.” For hours because Gabriel wasn’t well liked among his peers, even less so by strangers. He tended to scowl when he was being cross-examined on the stand, forced to defend the evidence he found during autopsies. A lot of lawyers had learned just how to press his buttons, prodding him into unfavorable light in the eyes of the watching jury. “And you said I looked nice today.”</p><p>“I said your suit looked nice.”</p><p>A wry grin spread across Gabriel’s face. “I hate court.”</p><p>As Gabriel finished off the last button, leaving the shirt to hang loose over the thin tank top underneath, he eyed his jacket with dismay. A garment bag would have been nice to shield it from the smells of the morgue. It was his nicer suit, now horribly wrinkled from the court pews and his impromptu nap.</p><p>He opened his sleeve cuffs while addressing Hanzo, “Do you know any dry cleaners that are open at night?”</p><p>“None that you want to use,” Hanzo toned absently, already donning an apron and shoe covers for the work ahead.</p><p>Maybe, Gabriel conspired, if he hung it somewhere, in plain sight, Hanzo might feel inclined to take care of it for him, if only for the sake of not wanting to be irritated by Gabriel’s disheveled appearance in court. It was worth a try. He tossed the rumpled shirt over the jacket. “What’s on the roster tonight?”</p><p>“Three so far.” Hanzo pulled the clipboard from where it hung next to the body cooler. The refrigerator unit filled most of the south wall; sixteen small doors, two high, stretched along the wall and housed their rotating guests. “A Mrs. Li, 72, died last night here in the hospital. Mr. Fergus, 42, died before paramedics could get to him at his office. Then we have a John Doe, found — “</p><p>“Don’t spoil the mystery.” The thrill of puzzling together the unknown death would keep him awake through the last hours of his shift. “Let’s start with Mrs. Li.”</p><p>The autopsy table was already beside Mrs. Li’s door and Gabriel couldn’t help but smirk. Hanzo strove for efficiency and, in the two years of working together (Hanzo being one of the only assistants that hadn’t quit after the first month), he’d made it a point to learn all of Gabriel’s quirks and preferences so their shift ran with the elegance of a well rehearsed dance.</p><p>It wasn’t always smooth. Sometimes Gabriel was required to take on interns for several weeks, which greatly disrupted the ebb and flow he’d developed with Hanzo. Then there were the annoying snags, medical students and police officers that were rotated through for their required stint of forensic science. The worst were the detectives who were impatient for the smallest scrap of evidence to press into a suspect.</p><p>Gabriel didn’t mind teaching, but dealing so intimately with the dead was not glamorous work. It edged the line of taboo for some, and delved into an uncomfortable area for most. Cutting into a living body in order to save a life rated differently in a mind when compared to the act of dissecting the dead to discover the cause of death. Gabriel held the title of Doctor, but no one thought of him as one.</p><p>Gabriel tossed his pants over the rest of his court attire and was in the process of unlatching his watch when the doors, which separated the morgue from the hall leading to the service elevator, swung open.</p><p>A tall, blonde man strode in, his steps confident, as if he’d been there too many times to care about the eeriness of being in the same room as several dead bodies. The morgue was located in the basement floor of an addition built off the main hospital. Connected, but willfully ignored. No one ever came there to have a friendly chat.</p><p>A sweeping glance provided Gabriel with several details to catalog. Strong, broad shoulders. Excellent physique and posture. A face that cameras would love. But, what drew Gabriel’s scowl, was the badge adorning the man’s narrow waist. A bristle of dislike hackled Gabriel’s shoulders. The last thing he needed added to his sleep-addled stress were the prying questions of a detective.</p><p>The man looked young enough, vibrant enough, to be early in his career. Still holding a positive disposition toward the work he did, before the penchant for alcohol and cigarettes caught up to him, before he became jaded upon realizing how much the workings of the world didn’t care about justice served.</p><p>“What do you want?” Gabriel growled in an attempt to ward off the unwanted visitor.</p><p>The man came to an abrupt halt. His blue eyes shot up from the file he’d been reading and widened with surprise. His gaze shifted over Gabriel’s scarred face then wandered over his lack of clothes. Standing in a tank top, briefs, and a pair of dress socks that stretched over his calves, Gabriel fell short of the definition of intimidating.</p><p>“I uh—” The man looked away, embarrassed, but continued to steal side-long glances at Gabriel. “I’m uh—”</p><p>“Are you lost?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>In the cooler there were several naked bodies. Nudity lost its meaning in the morgue. Gabriel was always quick to shut down anyone’s uncouth behavior to seeing genitalia. In fact, he took a particular, vindictive pleasure in ripping off the heads of medical students when they dared to <i>giggle</i> at an exposed body.</p><p>On the other hand, being surreptitiously eyed by the admittedly handsome man was an entirely different proposition. Hanzo never batted an eye at nudity, dead or living, which often skewed Gabriel’s perception of how other people reacted to the sight of exposed skin. The attention was flattering, but also a sobering reminder of his piss poor social life.</p><p>Irked, Gabriel spitefully spread his arms to better display his state of undress. “I assume I look better without the suit on.”</p><p>The man chuckled nervously.</p><p>“Now, if you’re done gawking.” Gabriel’s hands dropped to his waist as he resumed scowling. “What do you want?”</p><p>“I’m uh, Jack—”</p><p>“<i>Why</i> are you in my morgue? I don’t like detectives hovering over me.”</p><p>“I’m not — I’m your new investigator?”</p><p>Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Siebren du Kuiper is my investigator.”</p><p>“Siebren retired,” Hanzo said, the whirl of a camera following his words.</p><p>“What?” Gabriel spun around. “When?”</p><p>Hanzo took a second picture of Mrs. Li’s exposed body before raising his head to give Gabriel a flat look. “We went to his retirement party last Sunday.”</p><p>Four days ago. Gabriel drew in a slow breath, digesting the information with a pinch of annoyance. The days and nights were starting to blur together. He vaguely recalled having drinks with some co-workers in some quiet back room of a restaurant. Gabriel snorted and scrutinized the new guy with another sweeping glance. He wasn’t looking forward to adjusting to someone new, especially someone who looked so bright eyed and bushy tailed, so ill-suited to a graveyard shift. What a  strange choice to replace the stern-faced, humorless Siebren. Probably had drawn the short straw among his peers, stuck until he could transfer.</p><p>“You must be Dr. Gabriel Reyes?” Jack ventured with a smile and an open hand.</p><p>Gabriel crossed his arms, betting Jack puked the first time he moved a desiccated corpse. “They can’t be serious.”</p><p>The hand hung in the air a moment before switching to the back of Jack’s neck. “I’m sorry?”</p><p>“<i>You</i>.” Gabriel gestured at Jack as a whole. The well fitted slacks, the button up shirt, and the sensible tie. The blonde hair and the blue eyes. Christ, the very <i>shape</i> of him— “You look like one of those actors from the crime shows on tv.”</p><p>Jack frowned down at his attire before peering quizzically at Gabriel.</p><p>“You’re too good looking to be real,” Gabriel stated, vexed.</p><p>At that, Jack smiled and looked away. “You’re not exactly what I expected either.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Gabriel grabbed the scrubs from his desk and started dressing. “What’d they tell you about me?”</p><p>“They call you 'The Reaper'.”</p><p>Not the most flattering of nicknames, but a fitting one. It started as an inside joke among the police force to mock him. He held a special respect for the dead, for the work he did for them. The autopsies he did revealed their lives lived. From the arm broken as a child, to the secret coke habit kept hidden from the rest of the family. The hidden bruises, the embarrassing scar, the plastic surgery everyone suspected but couldn’t confirm. The hundreds of tiny scratches of an avid cat owner. The mangled scar from an attack that left someone deathly afraid of dogs.</p><p>The good, the bad, it all told a story.</p><p>It unnerved people how he could learn so much about a person from their body. Things that he shouldn’t know, secrets that weren’t meant to be exposed. So they scoffed, called it a lucky guess, or muttered about his perverse ability to talk with the dead. A reaper didn’t act as death’s last conduit to the living, passing on one last message, but Gabriel didn’t correct them. Reaper sounded cooler than being labeled a medium. Over time, he became rather fond of the nickname and the reputation that preceded it.</p><p>“And?” Gabriel prompted after sliding into a pocketed shirt.</p><p>“I thought you’d be a shriveled old man,” Jack murmured with poorly masked amusement.</p><p>A few years short of forty, Gabriel often felt old and shriveled. More so on days like this, where he fought to keep his eyes open and his mind whirled endlessly with the details of a pressing court case. He kept in shape as much as possible, hoping to avoid a premature death and gracing the autopsy table of another medical examiner. But he was battered, inside and out, and he honestly didn’t want to know how much of it was starting to show.</p><p>Gabriel leaned against his desk, eyes still fixed on Jack. “Are you sure you’re not a stripper?”</p><p>Jack smiled, thinly, before pivoting around and walking off in the direction of Siebren’s small office. Gabriel studied the subtle shape of his ass in the fitted slacks, knowing full and well he was gearing toward a sexual harassment complaint and a stern talk from HR. The hospital wouldn’t fire him for it. He was too good at his job. Not so much with people. It hardly mattered when he doubted Jack would be with them for more than a month. Sooner if Gabriel found him incapable of doing the job.</p><p>The sneakers he slid on were beaten, splattered with rust-brown spots, and were doomed to never wander far from the tiles of the morgue. He put on a second layer of protection — a disposable gown, shoe covers, and a face mask — and joined Hanzo.</p><p>Mrs. Li lay bared on the beveled metal table hooked to the edge of a large sink. The block beneath her back made her small chest curve upward in a morbid offering.</p><p>“Fingerprints?” Gabe asked.</p><p>“Done.”</p><p>A glance toward the wall showed the empty board. “X-rays?”</p><p>There was a tell-tale pause before Hanzo answered. “We’ll have them soon.”</p><p>Gabriel grinned behind his face mask. “Pissed her off again, didn’t you.”</p><p>“I shouldn’t have to sweet talk her into doing her job.”</p><p>A cant of head and raised brow was enough to prompt Hanzo into a scowl and a light, growling response. “They are taken, but they are not yet here. Do you want me to go check on their progress?”</p><p>Gabriel considered it, if only to playfully prod at Hanzo’s iron clad composure, but the preliminary report on Mrs. Li suggested it wasn’t necessary, just procedure. He shook his head. “Make sure to pick them up later.”</p><p>An initial sweep over Mrs. Li’s naked body revealed the beginnings of bed sores. She’d spent the last few months immobile in a bed but, even in death, her face was proud. It was ashen, almost a touch blue, but in her wrinkled features was the wisdom of a matriarch. A grandparent that wouldn’t hesitate to criticize her grown children and grandchildren, but always slipped small treats into the palms of the youngest children.</p><p>Her hands were bony, but not frail. Her feet small, knobbed with bone spurs, but set with hard earned callouses. She hadn’t let her age slow her until something unforeseen had knocked her down.</p><p>Gabriel measured the faded bruise on her hip, knitting the details together in his mind while Hanzo wrote down the findings.</p><p>As the outer examination ended and testing samples were gathered, Gabriel reached for a scalpel. He paused as the air stirred. A cold, whispering wind wound around him and raked his mind with bony fingers. The ethereal veil brushed against him as it parted like curtains dancing around an open window. Through the gap, a pair of hands reached out, settling on his shoulders, and a pair of cold lips pressed against the shell of his ear.</p><p>
  <i>”He’s too white.”</i>
</p><p>Hanzo’s pen paused over the clipboard and Gabriel shivered, tilting his head to rub his ear against his shoulder. He cast an amused look at Mrs. Li’s stony face. Jack, the new medical investigator, certainly held to the proud fairness of an Irishman. “I think he’s cute.”</p><p>
  <i>”Too white.”</i>
</p><p>“That doesn’t matter so much these days.”</p><p>
  <i>”What would your mother think?”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel softly snorted behind his face mask and started the y-incision, from each shoulder, curving under her small breasts, the lines met at the top of her sternum before extending down past her navel. The skin was peeled back to expose her rib cage and abdominal cavity. The veil shivered with Mrs. Li’s displeasure. Her irritation settled on his mind like the warning claws of a peevish cat.</p><p>Gabriel mentally shook it off. Some dead enjoyed chatting, happy to rattle off the events of their lives, their worries of unfinished business or left loved ones. They’d say their bits then slip back behind the whispering veil. Others kept to themselves, quaking with a lingering fear of uncertainty. Others still would snarl bitterly at him. And while they could hem and haw at him, hiss and spit, wail and scream, in the end they were powerless to alter the world of the living.</p><p>It wasn’t often one tried guilt tripping him.</p><p>“She’s got her grand kid from me so she has no right to complain who I find attractive.” His mother’s opinion on his profession, however, remained less than pleased. She’d rather he be a priest, shepherding souls to the other side, not cutting into bodies. She often aired her worries about how he was inviting bad things into his life by messing with the dead.</p><p>
  <i>”Too white.”</i>
</p><p>The rib cutter snipped through the sides of her rib cage with the ease of shears trimming back the nuisance branches of an unruly rose bush. It hardly seemed appropriate for him to chastise the woman for her personal views when he’d soon be hand deep in her organs. “You grew up in a different time,” he said to soothe her irritation.</p><p>
  <i>”A better time.”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel snorted. “The Depression?”</p><p>
  <i>”I’m not that old.”</i>
</p><p>“She’s not,” Hanzo said, lifting the top sheet from the investigation report to double check her age. “She was born in 1948.”</p><p>“I was never good with history,” Gabriel said, his nose scrunching while he inwardly grimaced. He stole a quick glance at Hanzo. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I.”</p><p>Hanzo, accustomed to Gabriel talking to himself as they worked, hummed while the skin around his dark eyes crinkled with amusement. “I find it entertaining when you do the old lady voices.”</p><p>In the beginning, when the veil began whispering to him, Gabriel could internalize the exchanges. He still could, but the lack of sleep made the words spill out. In between stating details of the autopsy for Hanzo to record, the dead snuck in their own comments. It became such a frequent annoyance that Gabriel had to stop recording during autopsies, opting to do his audio logs later while he poured over the notes.</p><p>Gabriel sighed. “Some of her colors are off,” he stated, eyeballing all of Mrs. Li’s exposed organs. He’d explore them more thoroughly in a bit. “Before we get into this, I want to check her hip.” The size and placement of the old bruise bothered him. “Does her history say whether or not she fractured it?”</p><p>The papers crackled as Hanzo flipped them around to find the right information. “No.”</p><p>“Family didn’t bring her in until she was unresponsive?”</p><p>Hanzo nodded.</p><p>
  <i>”I wanted to die in my own home. They should have left it alone.”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel’s gaze lowered to Mrs. Li’s wrinkled face. “It’s hard to let go of people.”</p><p>He’d stood at the side of his father’s hospital bed, watching him breath his last. The room had been filled with family vying to keep face. A nurse and a doctor had stood to one side, watching the monitors and making sure no one intervened. Abiding to a DNR when someone was slipping away had been a horrible experience. Even if it had been what his father wanted, it didn’t make it any easier. Gabriel had cried, silently, while holding his mother who cycled through sobbing uncontrollably to yelling at the staff to <i>do something</i>.</p><p>“There,” Gabriel said after he’d exposed Mrs. Li’s pelvic bone. His gloved fingers traced the hairline crack along the wing of her hip. “Fractured.” Smacked it hard on something, laid her up in bed, but she refused to see a doctor about it. She’d been strong all her life. With just a little rest...</p><p>“I suspect a clot,” he said to Hanzo, then arched a brow at Mrs. Li. “Unless you have a surprise for me.”</p><p>The test results from the samples sent to the lab would fill in any gaps of the story behind Mrs. Li’s death. He could only see so much with his eyes or feel with his fingers.</p><p>The whispering wind died down, offering no gust of rebuttal. It churned around his feet as he performed the rest of the autopsy in relative silence. He went through the organs, one by one, weighing and inspecting them. When he finally reached the lungs, the clot was there in the darkened patch of lung tissue. It’d been a partial blockage; a slow, tiring death. Her organs had quietly suffocated from the depleted oxygen levels until declining into failure. Her death was recorded as the result of a pulmonary embolism.</p><p>The ghostly presence, which usually faded by the time Gabriel closed a body, clung to him.</p><p>“Stubborn goat,” Gabriel murmured as he tightened the last stitch. “Time for you to go.”</p><p>It fled like shadows shrinking away from the bobbing light of a lantern. The feeling of its abrupt withdrawal was unsettling enough to make Gabriel’s shoulders tense. As Hanzo covered the body, Gabriel searched the room for the source of the chill creeping like a spider across the back of his neck. The veil remained, silent and staring from the far corners. He sensed a pocket of warmth amid the cold air and pivoted to find Jack rifling through the papers on his desk.</p><p>Gabriel ditched his face coverings and advanced on Jack, the veil swelling behind him like a child urging him to confront a school yard bully.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.</p><p>Jack jerked around, one hand clutched to his chest. “<i>Jesus</i>,” he exhaled, his blue eyes wide and flicking over Gabriel’s bloodied gown.</p><p>The morgue had a habit of bringing out the superstitions in people. Ghosts were not real until a man had to spend a night alone in a quiet morgue. Until every odd tap sounded like the dead knocking on their small doors, asking to be let out. Death unsettled people. But, for some reason, right at that moment, the dead were shying away from Jack. Gabriel had never known the veil to react to the living. Not this way.</p><p>Gabriel pulled down the front of the disposable gown while studying Jack for any vital clue to explain the irregularity. Finding nothing of the sort, Gabriel nodded toward the scattered papers under Jack’s hand. “That’s my desk.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know.” Jack made a small effort to straighten the mess. “Where do you guys keep the files for today’s cases?”</p><p>Gabriel threw away the gown and gloves before beckoning Jack to follow him to the small podium near the performed autopsy. Mrs. Li was back in the cooler and Hanzo was at the sink cleaning the used equipment. As Jack rummaged through the files, Gabriel lingered, drawn to the unknown. He liked a good mystery or a challenging puzzle, and the unusual skirting the veil was doing around Jack offered just that.</p><p>Gabriel leaned an elbow against the podium, snaring Jack’s attention. “Do you want to go get coffee with me?”</p><p>Standing at the sink, Hanzo shot him a questioning look before peering up at the wall clock.</p><p>“I know what time it is,” Gabriel growled at him.</p><p>In turn, Jack also checked the time. Almost midnight, Gabriel knew, just as he also knew which places nearby catered to late night workers. There wasn’t a doctor or nurse present in the building whose blood wasn’t laced with caffeine. Gabriel needed a dose if he was going to last the rest of his shift in a coherent state.</p><p>“Well?” Gabriel prompted at the awkward tension hanging in the air.</p><p>Jack’s eyes fell to the shoe covers ballooning around Gabriel’s sneakers. He considered them a long moment before his blue eyes flicked up to Gabriel’s face and he cautiously replied, “Alright.”</p><p>“Great.” Gabriel smacked the podium with the heel of his hand. “Hanzo do you want—”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Not even—”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Gabriel grunted, then said to Jack, “He’ll make his own tea.”</p><p>Jack set the files back on the podium then gestured vaguely with his hand, not entirely thrilled by the invitation but willing to see it through. Gabriel peeled off the booties before fetching his hooded sweatshirt and worn beanie. He secured his wallet into his pocket before taking the stairs. Jack followed in a pensive silence, only pausing when they made the lobby and Gabriel turned toward the sliding doors.</p><p>As the doors opened, Gabriel spun to walk out them backwards, watching as Jack reluctantly jogged over to catch up.</p><p>“Something wrong?” Gabriel asked, amused.</p><p>“I thought—” Jack cut himself off and shook his head.</p><p>“You thought since I put on a sweater and hat that I was going to sit in the hospital cafeteria?” Gabriel waited a beat before adding, “I hope your observation skills are better when you’re out in the field.”</p><p>Despite the prod, Jack remained unruffled. His lips twitched into a crooked smile. “Is this a test?”</p><p>The sidewalks were empty but well lit. Jack’s dress shoes sounded crisp against the cement while Gabriel’s sneakers scuffed the rough surface. Gabriel glanced side-long at Jack as they walked. In a way, it was a test. Gabriel wanted to understand why the ethereal winds tickled down his spine like melting ice chips whenever he met Jack’s sky blue eyes.</p><p>Maybe, he thought with a wry grin, he’d finally gone mad. He’d considered it, years ago, when he first heard the whispers. It’d started shortly after his car accident. A voice, sounding like his deceased father, had called to him from another room. It was easier to dismiss it all as a side effect of his insomnia than consider it the early stages of schizophrenia. But, over time, it’d only grown worse. Gabriel knew enough to be concerned, but hesitated to consult a doctor. It was the lack of sleep that affected his life the most, killing his ability to do social outings and driving him into a graveyard shift. The whispering of the dead, however, helped him do his job.</p><p>But, perhaps, alongside the voices he heard, he was beginning to hallucinate.</p><p>Jack certainly looked too unfairly handsome to be real.</p><p>“Yes,” Gabriel replied grimly. “It’s a test.”</p><p>“Oh.” Jack frowned.</p><p>Noting the disappointment, Gabriel stalled at the corner. The street lamps and the dozen buzzing window signs provided enough light for Gabriel to watch Jack’s expression while asking, “What did you think it was?”</p><p>Jack scanned the street for cars. “Nothing.”</p><p>“Do you often leave the answers on a test blank?”</p><p>A faint flush crept up the sides of Jack’s neck. “No.”</p><p>“So why do you think I asked you out for coffee?”</p><p>“Is this test multiple choice?”</p><p>Gabriel smirked, pleased to find Jack had a bit of wit about him, and stepped off the curb. “It’s a multiple part answer.”</p><p>Jack followed, rubbing at his brow and only partially masking the smile he wore. “I thought you might want to get to know me.”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>“Because you find me attractive,” Jack added.</p><p>Humming noncommittally, Gabriel ushered Jack into the coffee shop. A few familiar faces dotted the tables inside, a mixture of tired bodies wrapped in scrubs and dangling ID badges. While Jack read the overhead menu, Gabriel studied him. The soft lighting of the shop added a peculiar glow to his brightly hued features. Hazy, like the feathered edges of a mirage.</p><p>“Do your co-workers often hit on you?” Gabriel asked.</p><p>Jack snorted. “Yes.”</p><p>“Men? Women?”</p><p>Jack shook his head, his eyes still on the board and his expression torn between amusement and exasperation. “Both. Is this really pertinent to your test?”</p><p>Gabriel shrugged. “Depends on which you prefer hitting on you.”</p><p>With a soft sigh, Jack faced him. “If you want to know which way I swing, you can just ask instead of—”</p><p>“It’s more fun this way.”</p><p>Jack closed his eyes instead of rolling them. “12 oz coffee, black.”</p><p>It was becoming a fun game to see how to best get under Jack’s skin. Gabriel grinned. “If I didn’t already have a good idea of what you prefer, that kind of statement would scream “I’m straight and like vanilla sex”.”</p><p>“It means I like plain coffee,” Jack muttered.</p><p>“Does it?”</p><p>“Not everything is a mystery.”</p><p>“It’s my job to solve mysteries, and <i>you</i>—”</p><p>“<i>I</i> am not a mystery.” Jack went to find a table, leaving Gabriel to order and pay for the drinks.</p><p>Gabriel chuckled to himself and watched Jack go, eying his legs and wondering if he ran for exercise. Through the park, or on a treadmill? Jack seemed the type to enjoy the gentle turns of a walking path opposed to staring at the wall of a gym. Probably the kind of guy that offered a quiet smile to everyone he passed.</p><p>The dead were fairly easy to read, the footnotes of their lives written throughout their bodies. The living, however, hid their secrets. But they were not so indecipherable. Given a chance, Gabriel would enjoy peeling off Jack's clothes and running his fingers over every scar. He wanted to guess at their origins, to discover every small tell in Jack's body. Was he ticklish? Affectionately shy? What kind of face would he make as he unraveled? Just how much would he open up and leave his heart exposed?</p><p>The barista called Gabriel's name, drawing his thoughts from the woolgathering.</p><p>Despite the order, Gabriel brought over creamer cups and sugar packets which he tossed on the table before sitting. He slid Jack's coffee across the table before cupping his hands around his own drink, a three shot grasshopper latte. The warmth was a welcomed change to the chill of refrigerated human guts. The sweet scent of mint chocolate filled his nose as he quietly regarded Jack a moment before asking, “What makes you think you can do this job?”</p><p>Jack sipped at his coffee, without sugar or cream like a heathen, before replying, “Because I’m qualified and they hired me over everyone else?”</p><p>“You’ll be my eyes in the field. My nose, my ears — <i>everything</i>. The details you record prior to transporting the body could make the difference in a case.”</p><p>Seibren had been very detail oriented, to the point of annoyance. Gabriel hadn’t minded. Not really. The reports had been dry to read, but had all the necessary facts to piece together the events leading up to a death. In the end it mattered more to the detectives working the case, but Gabriel liked having the full picture. It eased the anger that burned through his chest when the courts failed to punish the guilty. As long as he knew the truth, he remained content.</p><p>Jack smirked at him. “Are you still upset I didn’t take in account why you put on a sweater?”</p><p>“Yes,” Gabriel said, honestly. “You were too hung up on whether or not I was asking you out.”</p><p>A twinge of hurt flickered across Jack’s expression.</p><p>“And now you’re upset, again, because you think I don’t like you.” Gabriel stated.</p><p>“Do you?”</p><p>“I didn’t like Siebren, but we had a working relationship. He did his job, regardless of what <i>I liked</i>. Can you do the same?”</p><p>Jack’s fingers tightened around his coffee. “I can do my job.”</p><p>Over the noise of the whirring machines and background conversations, Gabriel heard the veil stir; it sharply caressed his spine and licked at the nape of his neck. He grabbed Jack’s wrist to anchor himself to the world of the living.</p><p>Jack tensed, his eyes fixed at where Gabriel’s hand curled over his sleeve cuff. A crease formed between his brows, but he didn’t pull free of the light grasp.</p><p>The stirring whispers retreated. Gabriel exhaled, relieved, but, instead of withdrawing his hand, he slipped his fingers under the cuff. Jack’s skin was warm. Gabriel pressed his fingertips to his pulse. Steady. Strong. <i>Alive</i>. The beat was a gentle comfort as well as a startling reminder of how long it’d been since Gabriel had last touched a living body. A spark of excitement burst in his chest and his heart stumbled over the steps of a long forgotten dance.</p><p>“Why work with the dead?” Gabriel asked.</p><p>A small part of him wished Jack could hear the whispering, or feel the veil when it billowed, or shivered when the dead reached out.</p><p>“Pay’s good.” Jack’s answer was tense, brokering no invitation to dig further.</p><p>Gabriel unbuttoned the cuff, splitting the sleeve open. Jack twitched, uncertain, but a brimming curiosity in his eyes won over his initial discomfort. He watched as Gabriel explored his fair skin, fingers pausing over the smallest of moles. Not perfect. Not an illusion. Jack was a person, complete with flaws. Gabriel spread open Jack’s hand and mapped the callouses. Not the hard, rough hands of a manual laborer, but there was a pattern to them. A hand gun fit all the points of rough skin.</p><p>As Gabriel debated the possibilities, he squeezed Jack’s hand, enjoying the gentle give of life. When he lifted his gaze, ready to make a guess at Jack’s hobbies, his train of thought was derailed by the sight of a blush, pink as peonies, blooming in Jack’s cheeks.</p><p>A new question curled on his tongue, a desperate need to know why he felt drawn to Jack, why his mere presence quieted the chittering veil. It was a blessing as much as a blaring siren. Gabriel's heart stuttered, but his voice was steady as he asked, “Have you ever touched death?”</p><p>“Cadavers,” Jack whispered, his eyes flicking to the side. “In class — during rotation.”</p><p>The veil stirred, a gust of icy fingers and hissing mouths. It drowned out the soft din of the cafe and spurred Gabriel’s heart into a brisk trot. Gabriel searched the cafe, as if he could find the source of the ethereal gale. Nothing. He sought the comfort of Jack’s blue eyes. “There’s more, isn’t there.”</p><p>Jack stared at him, silent and stirring with unspoken comments. Barriers were forming, shifting the color of Jack’s eyes from open, ocean blue to dull shade of gunmetal. His guarded gaze dropped to Gabriel’s hold which he considered with an arched brow. “You’d make a very convincing fortune teller.”</p><p>The side-step in conversation was noted, but not mentioned. Jack could keep his secrets. One way or another, Gabriel would find the answers. Part of the fun was in the challenge. Gabriel shifted his grasp to cradle the back of Jack’s hand. He traced a finger, light and slow, along the creases of Jack’s palm. He didn’t know what any of them meant in the mystical world, but there were still some things he could read. Such as Jack didn’t smoke, not in the traditional way, because he lacked the nicotine stains on his fingers and teeth. The distinct smell was also absent. And there was more. His nails were clipped and cleaned, not chewed on. His fingers lax, not stiff under the unusual attention.</p><p>“I see a tall, dark man in your future,” Gabriel mused playfully.</p><p>“Already met him.”</p><p>Gabriel glimpsed Jack’s blue eyed smile before it disappeared behind a sip of coffee. “Handsome too.”</p><p>The smile returned, but Jack aimed it elsewhere. “Maybe with some beauty sleep.”</p><p>Gabriel pointed an indignant finger at Jack’s smirking face. “You just wait until you’re roped into one of these high profile cases. They’ll expect you to work all night then hang around the courthouse all day. Repeat that for weeks and then we’ll see who looks better as death rolled over.”</p><p>Concern presented itself in the thoughtful crease between Jack’s brows. “When did you last sleep?”</p><p>Gabriel shrugged. “I nap here and there.”</p><p>Jack waved aside the dismal answer. “I mean, really sleep.”</p><p>Again Gabriel shrugged. He didn’t like talking about his sleep schedule, or sleep in general, because it made him realize how tired he was, made him feel the ache in his bones, the slump in his shoulders, and the drag in his feet. Finding tasks to distract himself with, work or pestering a new co-worker, staved off the heaviness piling on him. Just thinking about sleep roused the weary beast. It pressed itself against Gabriel’s mind, offering the sweet lie of tucking him under the blanket of unconsciousness.</p><p>Gabriel slouched over the table and set his chin on his folded arms. His latte sat untouched next to his elbow. He’d save it for later, as unpleasantly lukewarm as it would be, because he knew better than to pass up the opportunity to surrender to the pull of sleep, even if it was only for a nap. It came so rarely. Twice in one day was a gift he would not refute.</p><p>“Gabe?”</p><p>Through half-lidded eyes, Gabriel regarded Jack’s puzzled expression. The edges were hazy again. Soft under the light, blurry through his lashes. Gabriel laid a hand over Jack’s forearm to assure himself of Jack’s reality. “You’re too good looking to be working with the dead.”</p><p>Jack patted his hand in reassurance. His fingers lingered there. “Why do <i>you</i> work with the dead?”</p><p>“Because I’m qualified and they hired me over everyone else.” Gabriel smirked, letting a beat pass before adding, “And the dead speak to me.”</p><p>“So I’ve heard,” Jack said, dubious. A tone most of the hospital staff took when regarding him with side-eye glances and whispered comments. It was a rather amusing joke among his co-workers, but they could never deny his results. Jack smiled at him, instead of rolling his eyes, and for that Gabriel was a touch grateful. He’d long ago developed a thick skin for ridicule, but it did get lonely being so ostracized from everyone.</p><p>“What do the dead say?” A touch of genuine curiosity wove into Jack’s question.</p><p>“That you’re too white.” Gabriel chuckled at the unamused way Jack’s eyes narrowed in response. “Most of the time it’s their life story. They bitch about family or about what happened to have brought them to my table.”</p><p>Jack remained skeptical. “So their family history and the investigator’s report. Information you can read in a case file. You just add in what you find during an autopsy.”</p><p>“Maybe.”</p><p>Maybe the dead really spoke to him, or maybe he was crazy. Jack, like so many others, had a logical way of explaining it, and Gabriel was happy to let it lie. He didn’t really want to know which side his sanity swung. Hanzo accepted it, whatever <i>it</i> was, and Gabriel suspected that Hanzo had a deep, spiritual belief harboring him from dismissing it as madness. They’d never discussed it.</p><p>“They ever tell you anything important? Stock options? Where they buried their treasure?”</p><p>“If only,” Gabriel huffed, sinking more into his folded arms. He briefly closed his eyes and relished the lack of visual stimulation. His shoulder relaxed as if he was easing into a warm bath after a hard day. He forced his eyes open, but struggled to focus on Jack’s face. “They only tell me what they think is important.”</p><p>“Like I’m too white?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Gabriel murmured. His lids were too heavy to keep open and the warm press of fingers against his hand were a comforting presence. Gabriel let sleep whisk him away, not knowing when he’d get another chance to rest. In the back of his mind, the darkness continued its endless stream of whispering gibberish.</p><p>He woke a half hour later, groggy, his back aching, and with only the cold remains of his latte for company.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>Once again a huge thanks to my beta reader for catching my hundred and one typos &lt;3</p>
  <p>This fic will be light in the feels department, but I hope it's still an entertaining read :)</p>
  <p>Follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/zavijahwrites">Twitter</a> for updates!</p>
</div>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gabriel had fallen asleep in more unusual places than a coffee shop. The food court in the mall (the bags at his feet had been gone when he’d woken up), an airport bathroom (he’d gone to splash water on his face and ended up missing his connecting flight), and, once, he’d woken to the sound of sirens, flashing lights, and blurry face hovering over his.</p><p>A strong hand had squeezed his shoulder and Gabriel, dazed, had tried to look around, only to find his head immobilized and he couldn’t wipe the welling muck from his eyes because a strap across his chest held him to the hard ground. A backboard. A voice had tried to get his attention but, from the corners of his eyes, Gabriel had stared at the sight of his car wrapped around a tree.</p><p>He remembered thinking, offhandedly, how lucky he was to have somehow missed all the parked cars, street lights, and quiet houses. It would have been a terrible blow to his insurance if he had hit one of those. There’d been pain, but it was little more than white noise. Everything had narrowed down to the sight of twisted metal and billowing, black smoke.</p><p>Then a trauma pad had been pressed to the bleeding gashes on his face, blinding him, and he’d passed out shortly after hearing the paramedic tell him how lucky he was to be alive.</p><p>It was with the same clouded state of mind that Gabriel stood from the small table and searched the cafe. Jack was gone. Gabriel wiped the crusted drool from the corner of his mouth as an ache pulsed between his eyes. The image of Jack was fuzzy in his memory, like a fading dream, and the empty seat across from him was terrifying to behold.</p><p>Grabbing his untouched latte, Gabriel shuffled up to the order counter.</p><p>The girl smiled at him. “Hi, what can I get’cha?”</p><p>He waved aside her question and, with the same motion, gestured toward his table. “There was a guy sitting with me.”</p><p>She glanced behind him, still smiling, but it was a polite reaction. The expression behind the work face said more. It said no one was at the table, said he was silly to ask her if she’d noticed what was no longer there — maybe had never been there at all.</p><p>Gabriel’s heart began a frightened two-step with his anxiety as he considered his own madness. Words hung on the tip of his tongue. <i>I touched him</i>. Gabriel fought against the doubt. Jack’s skin had been warm and alive, his pulse steady and strong. It hadn’t been a hallucination. It couldn’t be. Unsure, Gabriel wet his lips and refocused on the barista. “Blonde, blue eyes, good looking?”</p><p>Anyone with eyes would have noticed Jack as soon as he walked into the room. Or so Gabriel thought. The smiling girl merely shook her head.</p><p>“Alright,” he muttered, his chest uncomfortably tight, and left to walk back toward the hospital. He’d been ditched. Or dreamt it all. Both scenarios wrenched at his gut. Gabriel hunched his shoulders, glowered at his worn sneakers, and ignored the splinter wedging into his heart.</p><p>It was as he sipped from his lukewarm latte that he noticed the number penned across the back of his hand. He stumbled to a halt while sputtering out the mouthful of coffee onto the sidewalk. It had to be Jack’s. Nothing else made sense. He ran a finger over the numbers, back and forth, and hope thumped away in his chest.</p><p>Knowing his phone was back at the morgue, Gabriel burst into a light jog. He lost the rest of his latte upon knocking shoulders with a stranger outside the hospital’s sliding doors. He shouted an apology, but didn’t slow until after hopping down the stairs, two at a time, and bursting into the morgue.</p><p>“He’s real,” Gabriel declared as he stalked over to his desk.</p><p>Hanzo, perched prim and proper on a rolling stool, didn’t bother looking up from his open book. His eyebrow, however, raised in a smooth arch. “Who?”</p><p>“Him!” Gabriel made a large, sweeping gesture at the room. “The guy! He was here!” He dug through the papers on his desk, then jerked open the drawers until he found his phone. Gabriel quickly dialed the number on his hand. It didn’t even ring. The grating trio of beeps told him “<i>Sorry, but the number you dialed—</i>”</p><p>Gabriel ended the call and dropped the phone on the pile of work papers.</p><p>Hanzo gazed at him, the book closed in his lap and his brows now pinched with concern.</p><p>With a sigh, Gabriel gestured outward and stated, again, “He’s real.”</p><p>This time Hanzo followed the motion of Gabriel’s arm, tracking it to the wall cooler. He considered the small, square doors with locking handles before quietly commenting with a tinge of confusion, “Yes. There’s Mr. Fergus, Mr. Valdez, and John Doe.”</p><p>Ice plunged into Gabriel’s stomach. “Not them.”</p><p>“Then who, Gabriel?”</p><p>“<i>Jack</i>.”</p><p>The blank look on Hanzo’s face was not reassuring. Gabriel drew a slow breath through his nose, vying to remain rational. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you.”</p><p>“Unless you are referring to John—”</p><p>“I’m not!” Jack was <i>alive</i>, not some John Doe in the fridge. Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face, then paused upon remembering the number. He angled the inked skin toward Hanzo. “Do you see this?”</p><p>“Your hand?”</p><p>"The <i>number</i>—” Gabriel cut himself off, growling. “I’m going to fire you.”</p><p>Hanzo snorted dismissively and slid his book into the nearby podium, switching it for the tan folder of a case file. “You would never.” </p><p>“Keep fucking with me and we’ll see.” </p><p>“I am hardly concerned.” </p><p>Beyond flinging it as a casual threat, Gabriel would never see it through. Getting rid of Hanzo meant he’d be stuck doing all the court appearances. Not to mention all the temporary assistants he’d have to mow through to find one that fit even half as well as Hanzo did. No, if he wanted to retaliate against Hanzo, he’d take a more petty route. “Maybe I’ll start inviting Genji here for coffee.” </p><p>Genji being the whole convoluted reason why Hanzo was working there at all, a can of worms Gabriel desperately wanted to open and sift through instead of peering in through a crack in the lid. Gabriel pointed a knowing finger at Hanzo. It was another empty threat, but Gabriel felt inclined to remind Hanzo that he knew which rocks to turn over if the need ever arose. </p><p>Hanzo’s eyes narrowed but a quick glance at the clock deflated his forming rebuttal. With the file he gestured toward the sheet covered body waiting by the sink. </p><p>“Alright,” Gabriel agreed to the wordless suggestion and changed into a fresh set of protective coverings. The vexing number on his hand disappeared under the blue of surgical gloves. Any lingering thoughts about Jack vanished as soon as Gabriel pulled back the sheet to reveal the face of— </p><p>“Samuel Fergus,” Hanzo said. </p><p>The girth of Mr. Fergus’s stomach and the depressed way his shoulders slouched into his chest boasted of his desk job. “The office DOA?” </p><p>“Yes.” </p><p>“Not much of a mystery,” Gabriel said and Hanzo grunted in agreement. Gabriel folded the sheet down to expose all of Mr. Fergus’s bulbous torso. The way gravity pulled at his fat, pooling it around his body, gave Gabriel the distinct image of a blobfish. “You shouldn’t have moved him by yourself.” </p><p>“If you were—” </p><p>“I know,” Gabriel bit off the argument before it could start. “I’m sorry. But, when they are this big, please wait for help.” </p><p>After a beat, and a soft sigh, Hanzo conceded to the mistake. “He did almost roll off the table and onto me when I switched him over.” </p><p>Gabriel stared down at the pale body, waiting for the veil to stir. Nothing came. Not everyone had something to say. As he began the external examination, a cloying haze hung above the table, heavy with regret and quiet embarrassment. It passed, wafting by like an unpleasant stench, long before Gabriel reached for a scalpel. </p><p>The withdrawn presence left room for idle thoughts. Prying organs away from fat cells shouldn’t be the place Gabriel found himself wondering about Jack. Yet somewhere in between Mr. Fergus’s liver and stomach, there the worrisome thoughts were, like a sore on the roof of his mouth that his tongue wouldn’t leave alone. Annoyed by the distraction of the unknown surrounding Jack, Gabriel focused on a more familiar puzzle. </p><p>He peered at Hanzo. “Maybe you’re the one that’s not real.” </p><p>“You hardly pay me enough to exist.” </p><p>The Shimadas were beyond rich. Hanzo, even somewhat estranged from the family, would never have to worry about deciding between buying groceries or paying a power bill. Even so, he lived modestly — by choice. His abrupt change in lifestyle, quitting a lucrative career in law to pick up a two-year degree in forensic science to work at a morgue, all by choice, had been such a ensnaring curiosity for Gabriel during the interview. </p><p>“You’re just this annoying voice in the back of my sleep deprived mind,” Gabriel added. </p><p>“Yes, the voice urging you to get to work.” </p><p>“As I said, annoying.” </p><p>Back on track, Gabriel resumed working, verbalizing the findings for Hanzo to record. A fatty liver edging toward failure, a thinning of the abdominal wall preceding a hernia, and, most of all, the enlarged heart. It was always fascinating to discover the changes the body underwent in an attempt to survive. And, while Mr. Fergus had several medical problems, the heart attack had won out over the rest. </p><p>
  <i>”So blue.”</i>
</p><p>“What?” Gabriel asked. </p><p>“What?” Hanzo echoed. </p><p>The veil had barely stirred. The air in the morgue unchanged from the constant, cool temperature. Gabriel held a palm out to quiet Hanzo and strained to listen over the buzz of the lights and the hum of the coolers. No whispers, yet a tendril of unease stretched across the room. Gabriel’s eyes followed the dream-spun strand to the wall cooler. </p><p>“His eyes?” Gabriel asked the shrinking presence, like a shadow at the corner of his vision, he couldn’t focus on it without it disappearing. “What’s with you all? First he’s too white, now he’s so blue?” </p><p>“Gabriel.” Hanzo’s voice was like an anchoring rope around Gabriel’s drifting mind, towing him away from the sea of madness. “What’s blue?” </p><p>“His eyes.” </p><p>Hanzo’s breath caught with hesitation as he carefully said, “Mr. Fergus’s eyes are brown.” </p><p>Sighing, Gabriel moved to pinch at the bridge of his nose but remembered his bloody gloves at the last second. The caffeine was wearing off and his thoughts were skittering back and forth a step away from delirium. “Let’s close Mr. Fergus and take a break.” </p><p>Despite two short naps, Gabriel wanted to lie down. He had a cot set up in the supply closet, but he also knew without the draw of sleep he’d lie there staring at the walls while his mind restlessly spun with empty thoughts. </p><p>After the last stitches were tied and Mr. Fergus was back in the cooler, Hanzo left to smoke. Gabriel stood in the quiet morgue, weary but tense. An uncertain glance was flicked toward the wall cooler before he settled in the chair by his cluttered desk. After the Lacroix trial, he promised himself to go through the mess. For now, he pushed aside the papers to reveal the keyboard and typed in his login info one key at a time. </p><p>As the screen loaded, Gabriel glared at the ink smeared across the back of his hand. Sweat from the gloves had turned what had once been a number into bruise-like smudge. The computer screen flickered and Gabriel unearthed the mouse from its paper hovel. The last time he’d checked his email had been when the hospital tech had visited to update the system. The guy had offered to show Gabriel how to access his email through his phone. Gabriel had declined. He preferred people to speak to him, face to face, or call him directly. Most often his fellow examiners, the day workers, used the medium of sticky notes to convey any important information to him. </p><p>But, maybe, someone had emailed him about the new hire replacing Siebren. </p><p>Someone had to know about Jack. </p><p>“Which one is email?” Gabriel asked himself as the icons loaded. The only program he really knew was what he used to record his autopsy findings into the hospital’s database. Even so, Hanzo was the one often typing in the autopsy reports because it pained him to watch Gabriel hunt and peck at the keys. </p><p>Gabriel double clicked on a random icon and, as an unfamiliar program loaded, he realized the extent of his exhaustion. He couldn’t recall how to check his email. All his functioning brain power had been diverted to walking, breathing, and cutting bodies. His jaw clenched with frustration. He knew how to check his damn email, yet the information taunted him, dancing just out of his mental grasp. </p><p>The morgue doors smacked open, snapping Gabriel from his staring contest with the uncooperative screen. </p><p>“Hanzo?” Gabriel rifled through the papers on his desk. “Did I get any messages about the new guy?” </p><p>“This new guy?” Jack asked. </p><p>Gabriel spun around, eyes wide on the sight of Jack. He was wearing a navy blue jacket with white letters on the breast, marking him as part of the forensic field team. In one hand he held a metal clipboard while the other held the edge of the rolling cart weighed down with a body bag. </p><p>“I just brought him in — er, it’s a her though. Suspected homicide. Detectives want a rush on this one. I bagged her—” Surprise snapped Jack’s mouth shut as Gabriel’s hand coiled around the seam of his shirt buttons. </p><p><i>Real</i>, Gabriel thought as he tugged on the fabric, then spread his fingers over Jack’s sternum to feel the soft echo of his beating heart. </p><p>Jack’s lips formed around several words without finding purchase. In the end he did little but shift a concerned, questioning look from the hand to Gabriel’s face. “I bagged her hands,” Jack finished, his voice swaying with uncertainty. He carefully set the clipboard on the cart. “I’ve got her paperwork here.” </p><p>A part of Gabriel understood the words, but another part, the part of him that was currently back to gripping Jack’s shirt to keep him in place, wasn’t listening. As long as he held on, Jack couldn’t disappear. Tearing his gaze away, Gabriel scanned the rest of the morgue. “Hanzo?” Not there. Gabriel gritted his teeth and tightened his grip. He needed a second set of eyes to weigh in on the moment because— </p><p>He couldn’t trust himself. </p><p>“Dr. Reyes?” Jack’s hand rested over his, light and gentle as it tugged at the fierce hold. “I need to go.” </p><p>“No.” </p><p>A flush crept into Jack’s cheeks. “I have another scene to catalog. I just wanted to make sure you knew the rush on this one and— “ his voice raised into a sheepish whisper. “Apologize for leaving you earlier. I got a call for a body found and, well, I figured you could use the sleep.” </p><p>“Makes sense.” It did, but Gabriel could have rationalized that out himself. Probably had and now the ghost was parroting the reasonable excuse to him. His fingers remained curled with Jack’s shirt. “But you can’t go — not yet.” </p><p>“What’s wrong?” </p><p>A wild-eyed grin held back most of the howling madness Gabriel felt thrashing against the padded walls of his saner thoughts. “I need Hanzo to see you.” </p><p>Jack’s brows pushed together. “Why?” </p><p>“To show him you’re real.” </p><p>“Of course I’m real.” </p><p>“Prove it.” </p><p>Pity softened Jack’s gaze and the sight of it made Gabriel's shoulders tense. He exhaled, drained but aware enough to know he was behaving like a lunatic. His fingers slipped away from Jack’s shirt and— </p><p>Jack caught his hand. </p><p>Time gasped, spilling several seconds into one. Jack stared at him, a turbulent debate storming in his ocean eyes. His lips pressed together, determined, and he shifted Gabriel’s palm to rest against his chest, just left of his sternum, over his beating heart. </p><p>“There,” Jack said while gently squeezing Gabriel’s wrist. “I’m here, very much alive and real.” </p><p>Gabriel spread his fingers over the swell of Jack’s pec and concentrated on the steady thump. A proof of life. His own heart echoed the beat as an aching throb in the back of his skull. </p><p>A spear of white-hot shame shot through Gabriel at the realization that Jack was treating him like a child in need of comfort after a nightmare. It chafed at Gabriel’s pride, yet at the same time he was grateful for the kindness in Jack’s quick acceptance of the unusual situation. </p><p>“I’m not crazy,” Gabriel muttered as he withdrew his touch, albeit reluctant to break the connection that had served to buoy him up from being crushed under the growing swells of self-doubt. </p><p>Jack graced him with a humorless smile. “I think you need more sleep.” </p><p>“Yes!” Gabriel snapped and flexed his fingers. He drew in a slow breath and waited until the surge of anger simmered down. “Sorry. It’s just — I’m sick of being told that. I know I need more sleep! It’s not like I don’t try to sleep! It just — “ </p><p>“Come on,” Jack tugged his elbow and glanced around the morgue. “Do you have somewhere you can lie down?” </p><p>With a grim smile, Gabriel’s gaze dropped to the body bag resting on the cart, then shifted to the wall cooler. He lifted a shoulder in a careless gesture as his grin widened. </p><p>Jack’s eyes followed the same route and widened with understanding. “Have you ever…?” </p><p>“Twice.” The first time he’d laid down on one the trays had been as a joke for Halloween. Some of the hospital staff still wouldn’t speak to him after having the daylights scared out of them. The second time he’d been so tired that the idea of locking himself away in the cooler for a nap had been the height of his sleep-delirium brilliance. </p><p>“What’s it like?” Jack asked with a hint of awe. </p><p>“If not for the cold, it’s alright.” Quiet and dark, it had been a decent place to gather his thoughts, but not sleep. “I think a coffin would be more comfortable. The expensive ones with stuffed satin.” </p><p>“I’d never thought about it,” Jack murmured, paused, then nervously chuckled. “We are talking about sleeping, right?” </p><p>It took a second for Gabriel to catch on to Jack’s wandering line of thought. He grinned. “Not enough room for sex.” </p><p>The tips of Jack’s ears were turning red. “Just clarifying.” </p><p>“Not that I’ve tried,” Gabriel mused while pointedly trailing his gaze down Jack’s chest, letting it linger on his belt. “But I’m willing to test it out if you are.” </p><p>Jack tucked his chin and again chuckled. The laughter was deeper and it struck at Gabriel like a tuning fork. His nerves vibrated with it. The sight of a growing blush, spreading across Jack’s face, sent any thoughts of sleep skipping out of Gabriel’s mind. </p><p>Reaching forward, Gabriel pinched the lowest of Jack’s shirt buttons and slowly pulled the fabric free. In the back of his mind he could hear the HR department screaming, but it was worth it for the few seconds Jack looked so utterly blown away. An interest flitted through his blue eyes, dark and deepening, and Gabriel suddenly realized he had more than a snowball’s chance in hell to actually cash in on the daring gamble. </p><p>“I’ve got a cot in the — in the — “ He pointed at the supply closet, hardly believing his luck. </p><p>Jack’s fingers were firm on his elbow as he led him to and through the door. The closet should have held the majority of their supplies but Gabriel, along with Hanzo, had re-purposed it into a space where they could clear their minds after certain, stressful cases. It’d begun with the cot Gabriel had shoved against the wall and, over time, the room had evolved, bisected by the standing, metal shelves. On one side lay a kneeling mat, an incense burner, a few traditional paintings done on long strips of parchment scrolls, and a few gossamer curtains of cerulean. </p><p>“That’s Hanzo’s,” Gabriel explained with a dismissive wave of his hand. </p><p>His side was rather bare in comparison. A cot and some tacked up pictures of his family. His mother, sister, and, more than the others, his son. The little pieces of the life that had slipped away from him. </p><p>The space didn’t have the same sad, homely feel to it when Jack shoved him onto the bed. </p><p>Gabriel sat, his legs spreading on their own accord. His scrubs highlighted his bulging interest as he gazed up at the gorgeous man standing over him. It had been an embarrassing amount of months — no, <i>years</i> since he’d last been laid. A groan escaped him, wanting and pathetic, and he reached for Jack’s long legs, no longer caring whether or not he was a specter. </p><p>Jack rebuffed his hands, knocked his knees together, and pointed at the cot. “Lie down.” </p><p>Not about to push his luck, Gabriel did as he was told. Jack smirked, then sat down next to his shoulder instead of climbing on top of him or stripping down. Comprehension dawned, flicking aside the eager springs of lust and smothering them with disappointment. Gabriel groaned, again, but with dismay. </p><p>“<i>Sleep</i>, Gabriel.” </p><p>Gabriel folded his hands over his chest and scowled at the ceiling. “It’s not like a switch I can turn off and on as I please.” </p><p>“Maybe with some help.” Jack smiled and tentatively touched Gabriel’s temple, pausing for any flinch of protest, then slid his fingertips through Gabriel’s short, dark hair. A slow touch, heaven sent, that melted away Gabriel’s irritation. Jack’s smile was kind, and as Gabriel stared up at him, dumbfounded, a warm haze rolled over his thoughts. </p><p>Along the edges of his mind, the veil stirred like feathers being ruffled. </p><p>“Close your eyes,” Jack hummed. </p><p>The words brushed his ears like leaves being carried by a playful wind. Warm, with hints of autumn, and it took everything for Gabriel to keep his eyes open. He wanted to understand. “You left your number?” </p><p>“You didn’t call.” Jack’s touch continued, steady and hypnotic along Gabriel’s scalp. </p><p>“It didn’t work.” </p><p>Jack’s hand paused then, after he scoffed, his fingers resumed their soothing path. “I keep forgetting about the area code.” </p><p>A reasonable mistake, Gabriel tiredly thought and readily accepted the explanation. The edges of the room blurred and the coiled spring inside of him eased. His limbs were loose, heavy, and he felt himself sinking into the cot. A sharp crack of fear whipped through him. He caught Jack’s hand and brought it to his chest. While sleep sounded divine, called to him like an old lover, it felt like a cruel ruse. </p><p>“Was this included in the job description when you were hired?” Gabriel aimed to tease, but the whisper he uttered only reflected his addled nerves.</p><p>“As I understand it.” In the small room, Jack’s voice had lowered to a soothing, deep timbre. Rough at the edges, burned and smoky. The air stirred, cool and whispering. Gabriel’s lids drooped and Jack’s hand slid free from his. “We’re a team. If we don’t find a way to work together, it could cost someone’s life.” </p><p>The insight startled Gabriel back toward consciousness. “We work with the dead. No one thinks that.” </p><p>“You do.” </p><p>So what if he felt that by digging into the dead, he could reveal something to help the living. That he was, somehow, important to the veil separating the two worlds. It didn’t matter. He hardly made a difference, not on a large scale. </p><p>“Besides,” Jack toned with a smirk. “If you start slacking, it reflects poorly on me.” </p><p>Gabriel barked out a laugh and shifted until he could use Jack’s thigh as a pillow. Jack tensed, but just as quickly relaxed and resumed combing Gabriel’s hair. “Fine,” Gabriel said while closing his eyes and snaking a determined arm around Jack’s leg. “I’ll sleep so <i>you</i> don’t look bad.” </p><p>It wasn’t long before Jack’s deft fingers coaxed him into the darkness of sleep. And when Gabriel woke, twenty minutes later and once again finding himself alone, he roared.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gabriel stormed into the room with all the elegance of a tranqed bear. Hanzo stared at him from beside the sink. Next to him, lying on the examining table, was a fresh body. Gabriel pointed at it while his mind scrambled at the fraying netting of his reality.</p><p>“This just came in, right?”</p><p>“Yes,” Hanzo took his eyes off of Gabriel only long enough to glimpse the paperwork. “There is a rush on this one.”</p><p>“Who brought it in?”</p><p>For a quiet moment, Hanzo studied him in a way that made Gabriel’s hackles rise. With more patience than Gabriel could stand, Hanzo flipped opened the folder and the papers inside. “It’s not signed.”</p><p>A body didn’t just roll in off the elevators without an escort. Someone brought it there. Gabriel snapped his arm around, gesturing at the room at large. “Did you see him?”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“The guy who brought in the body!”</p><p>“No.” A hint of annoyance wove into Hanzo’s voice, sharpening the tone and leaning on his accent. “I assume you accepted it — without signing for it, or putting it in the cooler before taking a nap.”</p><p>Gabriel’s temper backed down like a growling dog that had been cuffed by its owner. He covered his face with one hand and pushed away the rest of the angry snarls. “I’m really off this week,” he said in lieu of an apology.</p><p>Hanzo’s mouth remained a thin, displeased line, but the tension eased from around his eyes. “You’re always off when you have to do court.”</p><p>It was a reasonable excuse to write off his behavior. Once the trial ended, and he could resume a quasi-normal sleep schedule, he’d level out. It’d always been true in the past. Yet this time Gabriel couldn’t shake off the veil. It clung to him, wrapped around him like a heavy theater curtain and despite pushing and pushing, he couldn’t free himself. Gabriel slowly shook his head and quietly confessed. “I’ve never questioned someone’s existence before.”</p><p>“Are you hallucinating?”</p><p>The number once written across his hand had faded to a ghostly smudge. Gabriel eyed it, flexing his fingers several times, vying to grasp on to a sensible conclusion for the strangeness cloaking his night. “I don’t know.” The voices never troubled him. They weren’t part of this world. He knew that. The line drawn between his realities had been a feeble thing, but it’d still been there. Seeing things, however, blurred the boundaries.</p><p>“What have you been seeing?” Hanzo asked.</p><p>“Jack.” The veil flickered, drawing Gabriel’s gaze toward the wall cooler. “He’s — he’s like my Sandman. He shows up and the next thing I know, I’m waking up.”</p><p>“That doesn’t sound bad.” Comfort had never been Hanzo’s forte, but he tried his hand at it every once in a while.</p><p>Gabriel frowned. “He seems so real.”</p><p>A quiet settled between them and Gabriel filled it by gowning up for the waiting body. The normalcy of routine helped. Murder victims always had a story to tell and he sorely needed the distraction. As he reached for the sheet covering the woman’s face, a white noise clicked on like a radio, the station nothing but static but ticking through the frequencies, following the garbled whispers.</p><p>“Sandra Daniels,” Hanzo said, supplying the final destination for the tuning knob.</p><p>“She’s going to be chatty,” Gabriel warned Hanzo before folding back the sheet.</p><p>
  <i>”Are you freaking kidding me? You won’t believe the night I had.”</i>
</p><p>He started with the basics, information he could take in with a full body glance. Female, average height and weight, somewhere in her forties. The bottle red hair wouldn’t match the color noted on her driver’s license. Gabriel carefully ripped away the paper bags covering her hands; a simple technique to preserve evidence. Her nails were covered in a lacquer layer of aqua green.</p><p><i>”I just had them done. That </i>fuck<i> — broke ‘em off when I tried clawing him off.”</i></p><p>Two nails on her right hand were missing. Gabriel took the clippers Hanzo offered and gently snipped away the ends for lab samples. He swabbed the pads of her fingers and palms, working with a familiar flow and ease, passing off items to Hanzo without having to spare the action a second thought.</p><p>Her arms and chest, where clothing hadn’t covered, were coated with dirt. Stalks of dried field grass threaded through her loose curls.</p><p>
  <i>”Fucker just rolled me out when he was done. I know that to city boys like him that any vacant lot is like a rural field to them, like no one is going to find me, but couldn’t he at least put forth some effort to make my death a real mystery? Like, honey, I know I ain’t the belle of the ball or anything, but at least give my death some meaning.”</i>
</p><p>“You’ll have to settle for leading us to the killer,” Gabriel said as his mind turned toward the evidence that couldn’t be sent to the lab. A camera replaced the swabs.</p><p><i>”I hope he fries.”</i> Photos were taken of every bruise, every scrape. <i>”Do they still do that?”</i></p><p>Gabriel thought over it. “No, it’s all done by lethal injection these days.”</p><p><i>”You serious? I’m left dying in a field wondering what my kid—”</i> His eyes grazed over the cesarean scar along her lower abdomen. <i>”— is going to do. Not like her father is going to step up, he’s been out for milk since the day she was born, leaving me overworked and dating shitty guys like this one.”</i></p><p>Hanzo lightly cleared his throat. “You’re certain it wasn’t the ex-husband?”</p><p>It was a detective’s line of questioning. An assumption made with the weight of numbers behind it. Statistics showed that, usually, the killer was someone known by the victim. A jealous, controlling lover. A bitter spouse. Murder was often done with a surge of emotion that drowned out rational thought. Most of the time. Hanzo wasn’t wrong to lean on the side of statistics. But, as far as Gabriel was concerned, Hanzo couldn’t be more wrong. The evidence told a different story.</p><p>Gabriel again looked over Ms. Daniel’s body, reading the history of her last few years. There were no signs of abuse, the kind of escalating violence he saw in domestic cases. There was no excess of injuries to suggest there had been a furious passion behind her death. The man — the large finger sized bruises around her throat definitely marked it as a male assailant — had choked her to death without preamble. It was a cold murder. Not personal, not to him. It was everything to her. “Do you have her medical history?”</p><p>Papers shuffled. “Yes.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>Hanzo hesitated, drawing Gabriel’s attention. There was a questioning in Hanzo’s dark, brown eyes. Gabriel waited. It was a lesson. A pinch formed between Hanzo’s brows as he scanned the papers. “There’s nothing that stands out.”</p><p>“Broken bones?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“When was the last time she was admitted to the hospital?”</p><p>A pause. “Three years ago for a stomach ulcer.”</p><p>“Alright.” Gabriel nodded. “Police record?”</p><p>Hanzo lips pressed together, stalling for a different reason. They shouldn’t have her police record, but Gabriel knew Hanzo, knew that when a body came into the morgue marked as important to a pertaining case, Hanzo always dug into the police records. Not something a morgue assistant would think to do. A lawyer from a big shot firm, however, would leave no stone unturned. The detectives wouldn’t be pleased to know Hanzo had dug into their records — again — but Gabriel wasn’t going to tattle.</p><p>“She was arrested last year for indecent exposure.”</p><p>
  <i>”Got so drunk with the girls and flashed a police car. I was just so caught up with finally getting a night out.”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel gestured at Ms. Daniel’s naked form, pale but unblemished. “She took efforts to curl her hair, do her make-up, get her nails done. Look — “ he pointed at her feet. “Even did her toes, probably for a cute pair of shoes to go with the low cut shirt.”</p><p>“How do you know—”</p><p>Gabriel traced the air along the line of dirt of her chest. It shadowed the outline of the shirt she’d been wearing before it’d been taken for evidence. He leaned over her and gently sniffed at the air. “It’s faint, but you can smell the perfume. She was meeting someone new and wanted to make a good impression.”</p><p>Hanzo considered all the details, but wasn’t ready to accept it. “Maybe she had a job interview.”</p><p>
  <i>”Ain’t no one hiring me, sweetie, I’m a train wreck they can see coming from miles away.”</i>
</p><p>Her words were like cobwebs on his tongue, stuck there until he spat them out. Gabriel sharply shook his head to rid himself of the clingy presence. She was interrupting the lesson. “The time of death, the low-cut shirt, and smoky eyeshadow say otherwise.”</p><p>“Maybe she was a prostitute.”</p><p>
  <i>”You tell that chink-eyed—”</i>
</p><p>“I’m Japanese,” Hanzo said with a flat tone.</p><p>“I know you are.” Gabriel raised his hands to soothe Hanzo’s ruffled feathers. “I think you offended her by calling her a whore.”</p><p>“I did not—”</p><p>
  <i>”He sees a gal down her luck and assumes she’s turning tricks to make ends meet. Like I don’t have any working skills besides spreading my legs.”</i>
</p><p>Hanzo arched a thin brow and Gabriel shrugged, then sighed. “I’m not seeing any signs of drugs or poverty. She’s a middle aged, single mother. She makes enough to provide, but she’s lonely, and she was excited to go out on a date.”</p><p>
  <i>”I really know how to pick ‘em, don’t I.”</i>
</p><p>“At least your guy is real,” Gabriel mused, feeling the cloying presence drifting away.</p><p>
  <i>”Take my hard earned advice, honey. If he seems too good to be true, he’s hiding something.”</i>
</p><p>With that, the veil retreated. The buzzing, white noise stopped. It took a moment before Gabriel could shed the last of the ghostly tendrils and pull himself together. He waited a couple more seconds, to ensure his tongue was his own, before flicking a quick look at Hanzo. “I’m leaning toward… diner waitress?”</p><p>“You missed your calling in theater,” was the only affirmation Hanzo gave him.</p><p>“They told me I wasn’t pretty enough.”</p><p>“Not white enough?”</p><p>“That too.” Gabriel grinned and gestured at himself. “I tend to disappear into the set during the dark scenes.”</p><p>“Could have worn a mask.”</p><p>“Like Phantom of the Opera? Why should I be doomed to play the role of the villain?”</p><p>Hanzo smirked. “Because of your face.”</p><p>“Alright, Mr. Metrosexual,” Gabriel groused with feigned annoyance. “Can we focus on finishing this autopsy?”</p><p>“By all means.”</p><p>It took less than an hour to complete the rest of the autopsy and rule the death as strangulation. The detectives already assumed as much. That was their problem though. They always assumed so much about a person without really looking. Over time, Gabriel found that cops grew jaded and tired of working the repetitive cases. They didn’t care who the woman was. She was a dime a dozen; some floozy that got in over her head. Wrong place, wrong time. The only thing they wanted to get out of the whole endeavor was the physical evidence. DNA to run through CODIS, pictures and paperwork to add weight to the charges eventually laid against the killer.</p><p>It wasn’t their job to care, nor was it Gabriel’s. He’d done his part to earn justice for the woman. It was out of his hands now, but it continued to weigh on his thoughts. It was a puzzle that would never be fully completed. He could see the big picture despite several, missing pieces, but it would always bother him.</p><p>Gabriel slid Ms. Daniels back into the wall cooler and turned his eyes to the adjacent door, the last body on their to-do list. John Doe. A chill zig-zagged up Gabriel’s spine, clamping down on the back of his neck like an angry snake. A ghostly murmur of nothing brushed over his ears. He looked away and the presence faded.</p><p>“Let’s do John Doe later,” Gabriel said to Hanzo, drowning out the unease slithering from the cooler. “The detectives are bound to stop in for the case notes on Ms. Daniels.” And Gabriel didn’t want to be hands deep in a body when the police arrived to badger him with questions and uncouth comments. He wanted a couple hours of uninterrupted quiet to unravel the unknown surrounding John Doe.</p><p>His feet carried him toward the supply closet. He was tired, always tired, but it wasn’t sleep that clouded his thoughts and weighed on his shoulders. It was the continued pressure of the veil, coiling around his ankles and mind like the dark tentacles of a kraken seeking to drag him down and below. Gabriel gripped the door frame to ground himself, rubbed at the ache forming between his eyes, then cast an apologetic look in Hanzo’s direction.</p><p>“I owe you dinner.”</p><p>Hanzo scoffed, but the sound held no real scorn.</p><p>The dead followed him into the small room. Gabriel laid down on his cot, faced the wall of tacked up pictures, and ignored the lingering presence. It glared at him. Impatient but powerless to do anything but hover about his senses like a gnat. Gabriel was equally unable to rid himself of the unwanted company. He lazily swatted at the weighted air — <i>leave me alone</i> — before pulling one of the pictures off the wall.</p><p>The face of a five year old boy, his son, Michael, smiled at him from the picture. It was an old photograph. Michael was in his second year of college and didn’t smile like that anymore. At least not for him. The last Gabriel had heard, through the grapevine of relatives, Michael had a girlfriend he’d introduced to the rest of the family.</p><p>Family had become a strange affair after Gabriel’s fall out with his wife. He tracked his free fingers over the scars bridging over his nose and across his cheek. The accident had further thrown life off kilter. Nothing had been the same afterwards.</p><p>Dying had that effect on people.</p><p>He’d come back, one foot tangled in the veil between worlds, caught in limbo while everyone else drifted on with the flow of time.</p><p>Gabriel pinned the picture back on the wall, distant once again, admiring life from afar.</p><p>In the ambulance, the EMT had called him lucky, <i>lucky to be alive</i>, and yet…</p><p>He felt so dead.</p><p>Gabriel closed his eyes—</p><p>— and immediately snapped them open at the sound of rushed whispering. It grew louder, frantic, deranged and urgent. Gabriel swung his legs over the edge of the cot and staggered into the morgue. Aside from the touchless wind, frigid and sharp as it howled passed him, the room was empty of life.</p><p>“Hanzo?” He called out over the noise then shielded his eyes from the harsh fluorescent lights crackling above him. “Hanzo?”</p><p>He grabbed the nearest counter as the floor grumbled, shifting restlessly under his feet. The metal and glass equipment in the cabinets rattled, the doors swung angrily around their hinges. Gabriel edged back toward the door frame, his childhood of growing up near the San Andreas fault line urging him to seek shelter from the earthquake. Except, with a blink, the room righted itself. The cabinets were closed, the lights solid.</p><p>The wall cooler clawed for his attention, earning a furious snarl and burning eyes. It became a vortex of whispers, sucking him in like a black hole.</p><p>“What?” Gabriel asked through clenched teeth.</p><p>In the top left corner of the cooler, the corpse of a man pulled from the ashes of a fire screamed. Screamed and hammered on the door as he died to the flames. Again and again. The gut twisting stench of burnt flesh assaulted Gabriel’s nose. He covered his mouth as he remembered the way the man’s blackened skin had cracked and crumbled upon being opened up.</p><p>Some people went quietly into the veil without a peep. A brief whisk of cool wind and they were gone, passed over. Others fought, clawed and screamed to hold onto the remnants of their lost life. Some were hateful, toward him, as if he had any power over death. He was not a shepherd. He did not guide the dead into the afterlife. He was the unfortunate ticket taker, getting yelled at because the customer didn’t like their seats. He couldn’t shove them through the curtain to hasten the process. He had to wait it out until they realized there was nowhere else for them to go.</p><p>
  <i>”So cold, so cold.”</i>
</p><p>“A blanket isn’t going to help,” Gabriel snarled but still pulled a sheet from the wheeled cart. He dragged it over to the cooler, pausing as he eyed the doors, trying to figure out who was complaining. He reached for the handle of Ms. Daniel’s small, coffin sized room. As soon as his fingers curled around the metal, dread shot through him like a jolt of electricity. His breathing hitched and his heart trembled. Unbidden his gaze slid to the side, locking on the door to John Doe’s slot. The wind howled, rattling the lights with a furious shout. Behind Gabriel, the dead shivered like chattering teeth.</p><p>Gabriel prodded at the lifeless paperwork hanging from John Doe’s door. The handle burned the skin of his palm. Unresolved. Impatient. The rest of the ghosts shrank away, cowed by the anger spiraling out from the unknown. Gabriel jerked at the handle.</p><p>It didn’t open.</p><p>Gabriel pulled again, but the door remained stuck. The overhead lights shivered. Gabriel pulled with both hands, but it didn’t yield. Stepping back, Gabriel raked his gaze over the unseen audience gawking at him from behind the veil. He snapped a hand at the cooler. “Is <i>this</i> what has your panties in a twist? <i>Him</i>? Who is he?”</p><p>He jerked on the handle again, but to no avail. He resorted to pounding on the door. The other handles shook as the dead rose up in a fearful chorus. “What?” He glared at them. If they would just <i>slow down</i> and <i>talk</i> to him then he could understand. Instead, the skittish way they fled his grasp only stoked the flames of anger. The burn victim screamed and smoke slithered out from the cracks.</p><p>“Stop it,” he tried not to yell, tried to keep himself from freaking out, but it was starting to all become too much. No matter how many times he blinked, the smoke wasn’t clearing. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be, the fire alarms would have been triggered if it had been. Gabriel slowly exhaled in an attempt to settle his nerves. The smoke crawled across the ceiling, curling and folding in on itself, building into a haze.</p><p>“Hanzo?” Gabriel called out, softly, wishing for a worldly anchor.</p><p>
  <i>”He’s too white.”</i>
</p><p>Mrs. Li stood by the wall cooler, her naked skin pallid gray with the stark, black stitching knitting together her chest in the classic Y-shape. Her wispy hair haloed around her sunken eyed face. Gabriel’s heart dropped. It was one thing to hear the voices of the dead, but quite another to see them upright and admonishing him with dead eyes narrowed to slits. On a table, bodies could retain a respectable shape. Standing upright, Mrs. Li’s abdomen bulged with all the loose organs sagging forward. The stitches strained, tearing at the edges, threatening to rip open and spill her guts over his shoes. Gabriel could no more look away from her than he could look away from a burning building.</p><p>She grabbed the handle to John Doe’s door and pulled it open. The tray rolled out on its own, supporting the body of the man covered by a thin sheet. Mrs. Li’s eyes bored into him as he approached the tray. She didn’t rasp the air with breathing, but she swayed like a tree being gently urged by the wind.</p><p>“Who is he?” Gabriel asked her as he grabbed the sheet. He didn’t want to look, yet his hand still pulled back the covering.</p><p>Jack lay on the tray — on the examination table, and instead of a sheet, Gabriel held a fresh scalpel. Mrs. Li was gone, but the veil continued to howl, and the smoke was everywhere.</p><p>“Jack.” His eyes were electric blue, but the light in them began fading as soon as their gazes met.</p><p>
  <i>”Did you get some sleep?”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel reached to touch him, but instead buried the scalpel into his shoulder. Blood welled out, blooming like a rose before wilting over his pale skin. “What are you doing here?” Gabriel sawed through the flesh, brutal and barbaric. There was a madness to the way he flayed open Jack’s skin. Blood spilled over the table edge and gathered in a dark pool around his feet.</p><p>
  <i>”I saved you.”</i>
</p><p>“What are you talking about?” His fingers curled around the bars of Jack’s rib cage, seeking to touch his heart. “You’re alive!” If only he could reach his heart, he could show the world that Jack existed. “This isn’t <i>real</i>.” In the back of his mind he knew it wasn’t. It was a dream, and in the smoke it was all beginning to slip away. Yet he still tore at Jack’s body, drowned in his blood, and silently wept. “Why are you <i>here</i>?”</p><p><i>”Isn’t it obvious?”</i> The light winked out of Jack’s eyes, and the flush of life left him pale as fresh snow on a winter night. His lips cracked as they moved over the words, <i>”You killed me.”</i></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gabriel woke in a cold sweat. He sucked in a long, ragged breath while his heart battered against the inside of his ribs. Shadows loomed over Gabriel and he threw up a hand to fend off their swooping descent. Nothing happened. His heart slowed by a couple beats, and bit by bit he was able to pick out familiar shapes. The metal shelving units. The worn pictures on the wall. The wispy, blue curtains shifting gently with the current of the air conditioning keeping the morgue cool.</p><p>The nightmare was fading, filtering through his mental grasp like dark water, but enough of it remained to keep him unsettled. Gabriel jerked upright and checked his hands. Front to back, in the creases, under the nails. No blood. It was just a dream, except—</p><p>The air stirred, whispering like two frightened children hiding under a bed.</p><p>When he stood, the presence fled. He chased it into the morgue, desperate to catch it and wring an understanding from it. Icy hands caught him at the door. They clawed at his face and forced his gaze toward the wall cooler. He swatted at the empty air, tearing himself away from the ghost.</p><p>“Hanzo!” The name rang through the empty morgue.</p><p>The whispers howled and pulled at him.</p><p>“No!” Gabriel clutched at the pain blooming sharp in his temples. A sickening swell of vertigo hit him and he staggered, catching himself against a counter. Again his eyes were drawn toward the cooler. He didn’t want to open it and find Jack lying inside. It was a lie. Jack was alive. He was real. Gabriel was just — <i>losing his mind</i>.</p><p>“Hanzo!”</p><p>He needed a lifeline, something to steer him back toward reality. The veil was weighing on him, pulling him under, and he didn’t know how to shake it off. Not without help. It wasn’t real. The voices weren’t real. He just needed to—</p><p><i>Wake up</i>, he told himself as he looked anywhere but at the cooler. <i>Wake up, wake up!</i> The equipment cart sat between the cooler and the sink; the tools neatly aligned by Hanzo’s meticulous hand. The metal gleamed encouragingly under the fluorescent lights.</p><p>Gabriel grabbed a scalpel from the tray and pulled off the protective cap. Fresh as a mirror, spotless from the autoclave and the edges machine sharp. Gabriel rolled it between his fingers as the veil welled up behind his thoughts, trying to wedge in between him and the sound reasoning he found while staring at the razor thin blade. If he died in a dream, he’d wake up.</p><p>Gabriel brought the scalpel’s edge to the inside of his wrist. His skin parted like warm dough being scored. It was painless, at first, until the blood welled and spilled out. It started as a trickle, but quickly grew into a slender stream that snaked down his elbow and dripped to the floor.</p><p>It was the dead that screamed, rising up in a cacophony of protesting voices.</p><p>“If you have something to tell me,” Gabriel growled while glaring at the wall cooler. “Spit it out.”</p><p>The crying din lessened, save for one babbling voice. It chittered inside of John Doe’s slot, high-pitched and scared. Gabriel edged closer, reluctant to be pulled along with the flow of the dream but curious enough to want to understand the reoccurring madness. The scalpel remained poised against his wrist, slipping through blood and skin as he moved. The pain was the furthest thing from Gabriel’s mind as he cocked an ear toward the frantic whispering.</p><p>“Slow down.” His ear brushed the metal, but the voice sounded even further away. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.” He reached for the handle.</p><p>
  <i>”GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!”</i>
</p><p>Gabriel flinched backwards, his shoe slipping through the blood on the floor. He drew the scalpel away from his wrist, dazed by the amount of red curtaining his forearm. It dripped urgently from his elbow and joined the smeared puddle on the floor.</p><p>Icy fingers crept up Gabriel’s spine, raising the hairs on his neck. It preceded the parting veil and the drawing, beckoning breath of the dead. It always came at him from behind, as if all he had to do was ease back, one step at a time, until the ethereal curtain closed around him.</p><p><i>”Stay with me.”</i> A different, desperate voice said from behind the same door. <i>”Stay with me.”</i></p><p>Gabriel’s shaking hand hovered over the handle.</p><p>
  <i>”I’m dying.”</i>
</p><p>It used Jack’s voice, the smoke roughed gravel of a voice. The statement, coming from the dead, was absurd. Gabriel knew it, yet he panicked and pulled at the handle. His fingers, slick with blood and weak from the growing loss of it, slipped over the metal. The presence faded, drawing back like a wave receding into the ocean.</p><p>Gabriel cried out, “Wait!” The scalpel clattered to the floor as he seized the handle with both hands. “Don’t go!”</p><p>“Gabriel?”</p><p>He froze, recognizing the voice. It reached him, registering through his ears instead of his spiraling thoughts. It lassoed around him, jerking him out of the riptide seeking to drag him under.</p><p>The room didn’t shift, the lights didn’t flicker.</p><p>Slowly, as to not lose the guiding direction of the voice, Gabriel turned around. Hanzo and Jack stared at him from just inside the large, swinging doors. Reality trickled through, washing away the fuzziness of the dream-like haze. The wide, frightened looks on their faces wasn’t a farce. They took in the blood, from the smears on the cooler door to the splattering on the floor. The scalpel laid at Gabriel’s feet like a smoking gun.</p><p>Hanzo reacted first, grabbing a handful of paper towels from above the sink and pressing them firmly to the gash on Gabriel’s wrist. His expression was thunderous, his grip like iron. He turned just enough to bark an order over his shoulder. “The first aid kit. <i>Now!</i>”</p><p>Jack jumped into motion while Hanzo forced Gabriel onto a stool.</p><p>“What happened?” Hanzo demanded.</p><p>Struggling to come to terms with the truth, that none of it had been a nightmare, Gabriel blankly stared. First at Hanzo, then at the paper towels that were steadily turning red. Only then did he register the tingling numbness in his fingertips.</p><p>“I was trying to wake up,” Gabriel whispered, meeting Hanzo’s fury with a look of dawning fear.</p><p>“Were you sleep walking?” Jack asked as he pushed a rolling tray close and dumped out the contents of the first aid kit.</p><p>“He’s not normally this off,” Hanzo said, defensively, to Jack.</p><p>To Jack.</p><p>The fraying strands of Gabriel’s sanity trembled as hope burst in his chest. He focused on Hanzo, the one he knew to be real. “You can see him?”</p><p>“<i>Who?</i>” Hanzo snapped with thinning patience.</p><p>Gabriel’s gaze shifted to the man in question. “Jack.”</p><p>Bristling with restrained anger, Hanzo did little more than glance in Jack’s direction. “This is John Morrison, the new investigator.”</p><p>“Also Jack,” Jack said while holding out a trauma pad to Hanzo. “My father is also John. I prefer to go by Jack.”</p><p>A frigid silence settled around Hanzo. He studied Jack for a long moment, then narrowed his dark eyes onto Gabriel. “<i>This</i> is your Sandman?”</p><p>A warm blush crawled up from under Gabriel’s shirt collar. “I guess so.”</p><p>Hanzo tsked, a crisp, disappointed click of his tongue.</p><p>As the sodden papers were removed, fresh blood spilled out. The cut was deep, but it wasn’t gushing in tandem to Gabriel’s heartbeat. Hanzo inspected the extent of the damage the best he could through the welling blood. Gabriel flexed his fingers, pleased to know he hadn’t sliced through a tendon.</p><p>“We should get you upstairs,” Jack said, his eyes fixed worriedly on the unsettling gash.</p><p>“No,” Hanzo said.</p><p>“Absolutely not,” Gabriel said at the same time.</p><p>Hanzo grabbed Jack’s hand, the one holding the trauma pad, and directed it to the wound. “Keep pressure.”</p><p>Despite the circumstances, Gabriel smiled as Jack filled the vacated spot. Jack was real; sitting there, not lying in the cooler. Gabriel curled a hand over the two applying pressure to his wrist. Acting under the guise of helping, but in truth he just wanted to feel the warmth of Jack’s skin.</p><p>Jack tracked Hanzo’s movements, watched as he pulled supplies out of drawers and cabinets. In turn, Gabriel studied Jack’s sharp frown. Calm and steady. If anything, Jack looked annoyed by the whole scenario. It reflected in his tone when he asked Hanzo, “Why are we not taking him to get stitches?”</p><p>Sometimes scalpels slipped. If it happened when a body was open, when his hands were coated in blood not his own, there were protocols he followed to help prevent being infected with god knows what. There were incident reports to be made, tests to take, and results to worry over. A clean cut, however, could be solved with strips or super glue. Accidents happened.</p><p>But the tell-tale placement of the wound would raise questions. Any Doctor worth their salt would know better than to call it a slip of a mishandled blade. So, while Hanzo did little but cast a flat look in their direction, Gabriel brushed a thumb along Jack’s knuckles to earn his attention. “How exactly would you word that accident report?”</p><p>Jack frowned, glancing between the wound and Gabriel’s calm expression.</p><p>“We’re a team, right?” Gabriel prompted further.</p><p>Jack’s lips twitched into a smile, there and gone in the blink of an eye. “Then tell me what happened.”</p><p>Gabriel glanced at where Hanzo stood back, listening. It was one thing to explain himself, truthfully, to his pragmatic co-worker and friend. Opening himself to be ridiculed by the man he wanted to bed was, well, awkward. He didn’t quite meet Jack’s eyes as he said, “I was having a nightmare and—” he recalled the vivid images of himself tearing at Jack’s ribs to get at his heart like some starved beast. He swallowed and skipped to the footnotes. “I thought if I died in a dream, I’d wake up.”</p><p>“You were having a waking dream?”</p><p>“No—” A superstitious person would call it a vision while a rational mind would point a finger at his chronic insomnia. Gabriel accepted both theories. He was a man of science, basing his conclusions on the physical evidence unearthed by his own hands. But he also was a man that tossed a pinch of salt over his shoulder after spilling it.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Gabriel amended with a sigh. “Maybe.”</p><p>Jack gently squeezed his wrist, a burning concern in his eyes, like a roaring fire against the night sky. “Next time, pinch yourself — really hard. Okay?”</p><p>“I’ll keep that in mind,” Gabriel murmured.</p><p>Hanzo returned and laid out the supplies, sterilization pads, thread — thinner than what they used to close the bodies — a hooked needle and forceps. He procured a small pair of reading glasses, delicate and square and oddly matched to his sharp features.</p><p>Gabriel wasn’t squeamish, not by any means, but his stomach dropped to his toes as Hanzo positioned the needle for the first stitch. It hurt. A lot. Gabriel blindly reached for support. Jack caught his hand.</p><p>“I’m glad you’re real.” Gabriel's attempt at a smile thinned into a grim line.</p><p>“I said I was,” Jack sighed.</p><p>“I’d expect any self respecting hallucination to say as much.”</p><p>“Meet many hallucinations?”</p><p>Another stitch went through and Gabriel’s tightened his grip, grinning with gritted teeth when Jack matched the strength of the crushing hold. “You’re the first.”</p><p>Jack’s smile was as equally strained. “This has been one hell of a first day.”</p><p>A fraction of the pain faded as Gabriel laughed. “Still want the job?”</p><p>“It depends, are we done with the interview process?”</p><p>“Still have—” the clock showed three hours left in his shift. John Doe still laid unopened in the cooler. As Gabriel stared at the handle to his slot, the metal smeared with blood, icy vines crept around his heart. The sharp pain from another stitch snapped Gabriel’s focus away from the dead. “Let me take you to dinner.”</p><p>Jack’s brows shot up.</p><p>Hanzo snorted.</p><p>“Both of you,” Gabriel said. “I’ve had enough work for one night.”</p><p>A soft smile spread across Jack’s face and his thumbs pressed along the back of Gabriel’s hand. A globe of sunny warmth bobbed in Gabriel’s chest in response, but the forthcoming turndown of the offer was like a dark cloud blotting out that warmth. “You should go home and get some—”</p><p>“If you say sleep, you’re fired.”</p><p>Jack’s concern shuttered before smoothing into a sly smirk. “Some rest.”</p><p>“Oh fuck you,” Gabriel groused.</p><p>“I like him,” Hanzo chimed as he knotted off the last stitch.</p><p>Gabriel grunted, not wholly masking the smile he directed down at the half decent stitches on his wrist. Hanzo had some practice, on the dead and slabs of pig skin, but living flesh would always be a different medium. “Not bad,” Gabriel mumbled while prodding at the sutures.</p><p>Ever the perfectionist, Hanzo frowned, tight with displeasure, and said nothing as he dressed the wound.</p><p>Jack squinted at the wall clock.</p><p>“Or we can get breakfast,” Gabriel growled at the reminder of his irregular schedule. “Whatever greasy, hole-in-the-wall joint you want, let’s just get out of here.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The ramen shop Hanzo brought them to was closed. Or, at least, the door was locked. A single light shone through curtains drawn over the windows. The sign said closed, yet Hanzo rapped his knuckles against the glass until the lock clicked and the door cracked open.</p><p>A woman, short with long gray hair fashioned back into a tight bun, peered at them. She was Japanese, if Gabriel had to guess solely on the fact that Hanzo greeted her in the language. After a brief exchange, the woman beckoned them inside and locked the door.</p><p>The place was more of a wide hallway than a room. High backed booths curved around round tables, comfortably private if there had been any other customers. It struck Gabriel as a refurbished bar. More so as he eyed the long counter, dark and polished, and the shelves of booze against the back wall. Some of the cabinets had been torn out and replaced with cook tops.</p><p>A kid, couldn’t be more than twenty, yawned at Gabriel from behind the make-shift counter.</p><p>Gabriel slid into the booth after Jack. The woman disappeared and reappeared with a slender sake bottle. She set it on the table, along with cups, while Hanzo spoke to her. It sounded like an order, given that the woman periodically nodded to Hanzo’s brief pauses. Gabriel watched the exchange with a quiet interest, then waited until she was gone before smirking at Hanzo. “A man of many secrets.”</p><p>Hanzo grunted and pulled two cups toward himself. One he filled with the sake, the other served as an ashtray as he shamelessly struck a match to the end of a cigarette.</p><p>“Family?” Jack asked.</p><p>Hanzo eyed Jack, perhaps debating whether or not it was worth answering. He shrugged and tapped ash into one of the empty cups. “Gratitude.”</p><p>Gabriel grinned and leaned against Jack’s shoulder. “He used to be a hot shot lawyer.”</p><p>It only took a second for the connection to click in Jack’s eyes. “Shimada, as in the law firm Shimada?”</p><p>“His father owns the firm.”</p><p>“So,” Jack paused as he thought over the new information. “Former client?”</p><p>Gabriel nodded. “That’d be my guess.”</p><p>Given the ongoing exchange between the woman and kid read as familial, Gabriel was leaning toward the kid being the woman’s grandson. The guy was annoyed, tired, but had begrudgingly started working. Indebted, to either the woman or Hanzo. Gabriel spun the sake battle around, glancing over the expensive label. Several more guesses teased at Gabriel’s mind but, judging by the icy look Hanzo kept level on him, all of it would be shot down or go without comment.</p><p>But, having known Hanzo for a time, Gabriel had learned just where to apply pressure to get the response he wanted. “Or they’re afraid of his father and—”</p><p>“Drug possession. Pro bono,” Hanzo growled at him because, Gabriel knew, he hated to be associated with his father. “They were trying to string him up for trafficking and intent to sell.”</p><p>“Poor kid just wanted some weed,” Gabriel mused, then smirked. “Sounds familiar.”</p><p>“We <i>do not</i> talk about my brother,” Hanzo threw back the sake like a shot of whiskey, the severity in his face not lifting until he poured a second cup. This one he delicately sipped at before regarding Gabriel’s knowing look. Hanzo huffed, irritated, and traded the sake for the cigarette. “Not while I’m sober.”</p><p>Jack gave the sake bottle a curious sniff then, apparently unimpressed with the contents, fished out the drink menu from the back of the booth. He glanced between Gabriel and Hanzo, to make sure they were through, before gently venturing a question. “So why do you work at a morgue?”</p><p>Gabriel chuckled, earning Jack’s puzzled glance.</p><p>“What?” Jack asked.</p><p>“Too personal.” Gabriel stole the drink menu from Jack. “He won't answer or he’ll give you a polite, run-around response.”</p><p>Jack flicked a glance between the other two. “Is this some kind of game?”</p><p>“If you haven’t already ascertained,” Hanzo said after a blowing smoke toward the ceiling. “Gabriel enjoys guessing.”</p><p>A wry grin stretched across Jack’s face and Hanzo grunted in sympathetic understanding.</p><p>“It’s not a <i>guess</i>.” Gabriel looked up from the menu after finding one he recognized among the foreign brands. “It’s more of a hypothesis—”</p><p>“An <i>educated</i> guess,” Hanzo amended with a snort.</p><p>Gabriel flashed him a toothy grin. “I have evidence and I only seek to prove what I know to be true.”</p><p>“Yet you couldn’t prove to yourself that he was real,” Hanzo shot back while gesturing at Jack.</p><p>Unable to refute the simple truth to the words, Gabriel pressed his lips together. It should have never been an issue. With Jack sitting beside him, so vibrant and warm, it sounded silly to have ever questioned his existence. Gabriel considered Jack a moment before curling a hand over his thigh.</p><p>“H-hey!” Jack jerked in surprise.</p><p>“Felt real enough,” Gabriel mused, his grin widening when Jack caught his hand from wandering but didn’t push it away.</p><p>“You’re — you —” Jack’s mouth fished for the right words. He looked to Hanzo, searching for an ally. “Is he like this with everyone?”</p><p>Hanzo arched a brow, “With all of who? The dead?”</p><p>“I want to read your fortune,” Gabriel teased, pressing his fingers into the inseam of Jack’s thigh. It was amusing to watch Jack’s conflict of interest, exasperation, and wariness. Gabriel leaned close enough to whisper, “Imagine what I could learn about you if I had you naked under my hands.”</p><p>Jack sucked in a soft breath.</p><p>Daring to take advantage of the opening, Gabriel brushed a kiss along the side of Jack’s neck. Heat wafted off his skin, the smell of his cologne a faint, gentle spice. Jack hand tightened over his as he audibly swallowed.</p><p>“Whiskey?” Gabriel asked as he withdrew, stemming the urge to step further over the line.</p><p>Jack’s eyes were dark and swimming with an unfettered want as, for a long moment, he stared without hearing the question. A resounding cord of desire knotted in Gabriel’s gut. His breathing deepened with the sudden thought of shoving Jack up against the bathroom wall. Right then, right there. Quick and dirty, like a shot of whiskey thrown back, burning down his throat instead of being sipped at from a tumbler with restraint and dignity.</p><p>Jack cleared his throat, but a breathy rasp remained. “Whiskey’s fine.”</p><p>With the drink menu in hand, Gabriel slid out of the booth, inordinately pleased with the night and eager to press back against Jack’s side. He found the old woman and pointed to the menu item, signaling what he wanted with two raised fingers. She spoke English, of that Gabriel had no doubt, but thus far she’d held to the ploy of only speaking Japanese.</p><p>Upon returning to the table, Jack hesitated, a second too long, before accepting the offered drink. Gabriel inwardly winced. It was entirely possible he’d pressed his luck several words and touches too far. Or, in the minute Gabriel had been gone, Jack had come to his senses. When Gabriel sat, he left a polite amount of space between them, and gauged the situation from over the rim of his glass.</p><p>The bowls of Ramen arrived shortly afterward, and Gabriel forgot his unease in the wake of his dawning hunger. He hadn’t eaten since the meager, coffee-heavy breakfast he’d downed before heading to the courthouse. The smell alone, wafting warm and full of promising flavors, was enough to make his mouth water.</p><p>“It’s really good,” Jack said to Hanzo, putting words to what Gabriel expressed with a wistful moan.</p><p>A faint smile crossed Hanzo’s stoic features. “I know.”</p><p>As they ate, and drank, the surrendered space Gabriel had given whittled down to near nothing. Instead of edging toward the middle ground of the round booth, Jack sidled up next to Gabriel, once again brushing elbows with the carelessness of a wind pressing the branches of a tree against a window. Gentle, but stark, unable to be dismissed and constantly scratching at Gabriel’s awareness.</p><p>The whiskey was hitting him hard, even with the belly full of good food. A gentle fog rolled over his mind. The voices were — not quite gone, but <i>quiet</i>. Jack’s presence, tantalizingly close, was the occasional electric spark keeping Gabriel from wrapping himself in the peaceful haze and laying his head on the table.</p><p>“But he can’t <i>really</i> talk to the dead,” Jack was saying to Hanzo in a conversation Gabriel only half heard.</p><p>“No.” Hanzo made a sharp, dismissive gesture, as exaggerated as Jack’s absentminded wave of hand. “The dead speak <i>through</i> him.”</p><p>“What does that even mean?” The whiskey leaned on Jack’s words, making them crackle like a stoked hearth. His grin was loose and lopsided and Gabriel stared at him, caught by the urge to kiss him, to drink down some of the life he exuded.</p><p>“You will eventually hear it yourself.” The sake did not warm Hanzo’s tone, nor did it soften his sharp features as he countered Jack’s comforting rumble.</p><p>Jack scoffed. “I’m going to start hearing the dead?”</p><p>With narrowed eyes, Hanzo gestured to Gabriel. “You will hear <i>him</i>.”</p><p>Jack eyed Gabriel with a sly smile. “And what am I going to hear?”</p><p>Gabriel’s gaze dipped to Jack’s mouth, slow to process the question. He mentally flailed and thrust the conversation back toward Hanzo. “How did Seibren phrase it?”</p><p>Under the pretense of a thoughtful silence, Hanzo raised his cup and drank deeply. The empty cup knocked firmly against the table when his arm lowered. “He called it a gift of hyper observation filtered through the mouth of a theatrical insomniac.” Gabriel cocked his head to the side, doubtful, and Hanzo smirked. “I may have added the last part.”</p><p>Warmth pressed against Gabriel’s side and he reflexively responded by curling an arm around Jack’s waist. Those too blue eyes were regarding him, waiting for more of the story. Gabriel wanted to tell him everything: from the strange whispering haunting the back of his thoughts to the chilling wind that raked around him. From the deafening roar the veil could be to the way it all fell quiet when they were together.</p><p>Loathed to lose Jack’s interest by exposing the extent of his inner madness, Gabriel said none of it. “Saying I talk to the dead sounds cooler.”</p><p>Jack’s lids drooped and his smile veered dangerously close to drunk. “Like ‘Reaper’?”</p><p>“Took me <i>years</i> to earn that nickname.”</p><p>“Maybe I’ll just call you crazy.”</p><p>“Call me whatever you want.”</p><p>Kissing Jack happened so subtly that Gabriel wasn’t sure who leaned in first. It was slow and soft and filled Gabriel with such a great wash of relief that tears pricked at his eyes. A sun blazed inside of his chest. It was a kiss of life, saving and revitalizing and Gabriel never wanted it to end.</p><p>Jack’s lips moved with his, lazy and content, while his tongue playfully flicked at the edges of the kiss.</p><p>The buzz of heavenly completion was broken by Hanzo's feigned huff of disgust. “Ugh, at least wait until I get an Uber.”</p><p>Gabriel chuckled, eyes only half open and his lips brushing, electric and soft, against Jack’s. “Just call your brother.”</p><p>“I will <i>not</i>—”</p><p>The air around them cracked, shifting from warm and loose to frigid and brittle. Hanzo’s cell phone buzzed against the table and he stared at it as if it were a viper coiling to strike. The change was so stark that Gabriel almost mistook it for the creeping of the veil. He went still, his arm around Jack but his eyes on Hanzo. “What is it?”</p><p>Hanzo’s trance snapped and his gaze lifted from the writhing phone. “It’s — excuse me.” Grabbing the phone, Hanzo slid out of the booth and walked briskly toward the exit. He answered the call just before the door, his tone low and flat and in Japanese.</p><p>“What happened?” Jack asked, the words soft in the lingering tension.</p><p>Not wanting to ruin the mood, Gabriel shrugged it off. “He got a call.”</p><p>“Yeah, I saw that, but he looked scared.”</p><p>“Probably his father.”</p><p>Jack’s weight left his side. “I should get home. It’s late — early.”</p><p>“My place?” With the loss of warmth, Gabriel felt the swirling of the veil tapping at the thin, glassy barrier keeping it at bay.</p><p>A regretful blush colored Jack’s face and his blue eyes skirted away. “We work together.”</p><p>“I don’t care.”</p><p>While it was wise advice not to get involved with co-workers, Gabriel never much listened to other people. Of course, dating, or casual liaisons, had always been a non-issue. Not many people caught his eye, never in the way Jack had invaded his every waking thought. Whatever was between them, Gabriel already felt the cut of it engraved onto his heart. He refused to lose Jack over something as trivial as the faux-pas of dating a co-worker.</p><p>“I never thought…” Jack trailed off, shaking his head.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>The following lapse in silence said only one thing. Jack had a secret. It had nearly slipped free, but at the last second he’d caught it and shoved it back into hiding. Several worrisome thoughts swarmed Gabriel’s nerves like angry wasps. He dropped his gaze to the table scattered with their empty glasses and ramen bowls. In the lull, where Gabriel warred with the pros and cons of pursuing the topic, Hanzo returned.</p><p>The usual lines of pride and acerbity were gone, leaving Hanzo pale and bemused. He held his phone out in one hand as if befuddled how it had even gotten there. A tension drew his shoulders back and abnormally straight. His dark eyes drifted to Gabriel and Jack. “That was my brother.”</p><p>Gabriel’s brows inched upward. “I was kidding when I said you should call him.”</p><p>Hanzo shook his head, a slow side side motion, like a man waking from a deep sleep. “He’s coming to get us.”</p><p>Distress rolled off of Hanzo in deepening waves. The unease seeped into Gabriel, tightening like a hand around his heart. To steady himself, Gabriel curled a hand around Jack’s forearm and pressed his fingers into the skin. Warm. Alive. Real.</p><p>“Hanzo,” Gabriel said, firmly, to draw the man out of his daze. “Why is Genji coming?”</p><p>“There was an explosion,” Hanzo whispered.</p><p>Which meant multiple bodies in dire need of identification. All hands to deck. Gabriel dug out his phone to check the time, even if he knew it to be a pointless endeavor. He’d work, along with the other medical examiners, regardless that his shift was ending.</p><p>Several missed calls stole his attention away from the time. His phone had been on silent mode since his stint in court. He opened the recent calls tab, noting the majority of calls had come in the last fifteen minutes. All of them from co-workers. A dozen more text messages were waiting for him, frantic and wanting to know where he was.</p><p>Gabriel scoffed. “Play hooky one night and everyone loses their minds.”</p><p>Jack’s phone started ringing, as piercing and dreadful as an air siren.</p><p>“At the hospital.” Disbelief lightened Hanzo’s tone to an airy whisper. “The explosion was at the hospital.” His gaze settled on Gabriel’s, mystified and alarmed. “In the morgue.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The soft music playing from the corner speakers dimmed to fuzzy, white noise. Even the sound of Jack’s voice, as he answered a second call from a concerned co-worker, seemed muffled. Gabriel held Hanzo’s gaze, seeing his own senseless questions stirring in the other man’s eyes, rising in tides of paranoia and bewilderment. Having coaxed his co-workers out of the morgue, only to have it blow up a short while later, was too much of a coincidence to dismiss.</p><p>Gabriel tallied together a feeble alibi in his mind. He’d been tired, drawn thin by the events of the day, and he’d only wanted to soak in the comfort of Jack’s presence somewhere away from the chittering dead. Not an explanation he could give to an investigating team when the spotlight swiveled his way.</p><p>“I don’t know anything,” Gabriel said, quietly, to Hanzo.</p><p>“You—” Hanzo began, but cut off as Jack ended his call.</p><p>Despite the old woman’s protest of not needing to be paid, Gabriel left money on the table for the meal and drinks before leaving. The sun trickled in through the tall buildings, patches of once dark sky were forming bands of dark navy and, below those, glimpses of robin-egg blue. Birds sang with bright, bursting songs.</p><p>Gabriel stood next to Hanzo, staring out at the street as a single car drove past. Jack lingered several strides away, stuck in a cycle of answering the non-stop calls asking his where-abouts. Gabriel left his own phone on silent. He’d seen Hanzo respond to a few texts, but not take any calls.</p><p>A helicopter drowned out the birds as it cut low across the sky and veered in the direction of the hospital. As the chop of blades waned, in the lull before the birds shook off the disruption, the distant wail of sirens registered. The knot of tension in Gabriel’s chest tightened. It didn’t feel real, and until he saw the wreckage for himself, he couldn’t wrap his head around it.</p><p>The gloom briefly lifted when Genji arrived. The front tire hub scraped against the curb in his rush to park. He darted out and threw his arms around a rather stunned Hanzo.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Hanzo said while awkwardly patting Genji’s shoulder. They exchanged hushed words of Japanese before everyone climbed into the car.</p><p>The radio was off and the quiet which filled the car was restless and fraying at the seams. It was like a sloppy row of stitches that Gabriel wanted to cut open and let everything spill out. The road leading to the hospital was clogged. First responders and firetrucks. Police cars and news vans. There were citizens, either there to gawk at the atrocity smoking at the end of the block, or they were trying to shoulder their way inside to reach hospitalized loved ones.</p><p>The building where the morgue was located, thankfully adjacent to the meat and bones of the actual hospital, still stood. There was smoke, but from what little Gabriel could see from the low angle of the car window, nothing was burning. The scene outside the dark building, flashing with spinning lights like a storm striking over a thrashing sea, was the more chilling sight.</p><p>“What happened?” Jack asked Genji, leaning forward from the backseat to better peer out the front window.</p><p>“They don’t know yet.” Genji’s dark hair was short, his face clean of any wisp of facial hair, and his attitude was most often carefree and playful. He was Hanzo’s opposite in almost every way yet, at the moment, the two Shimada brothers wore the same, stoic expression and spoke with a flat, factual tone.</p><p>“How bad is it?” Jack couldn’t see any more than Gabriel could of the damages.</p><p>“It was just the morgue, but there were pieces of bodies and everyone thought it was — that it was — “ Genji worked a hand through his hair. “But it was just the bodies that were already there — already dead.”</p><p>“What exploded?” Gabriel asked, his question aimed at Hanzo, who knew the morgue as well as him. There wasn’t anything there that could explode due to any negligence on their part. A cooler could malfunction. A socket might overload a circuit, maybe even start an electrical fire — but the sprinkler system would have doused such a thing.</p><p>Hanzo made an inarticulate gesture, suggesting he only had a handful of equally unlikely guesses.</p><p>The conversation lulled as Genji’s car crawled past the opened back of an ambulance. Jack’s hands flexed, restless, over his knees as uniformed paramedics loaded an occupied gurney into the back. “Anyone hurt?”</p><p>“Nothing serious, at least not anyone that they found right away. We’re not allowed near the site.” Genji shouldn’t have been there. While he worked at the same hospital, with physical therapy patients, he should have been asleep at home. Someone must have woken him with a call filled with the potential bad news of his brother’s gruesome demise.</p><p>“They’re evacuating?” Jack asked as they passed a second ambulance, this one from a neighboring county.</p><p>Genji nodded.</p><p>Before Gabriel could wrap his head around the enormous task of evacuating a hospital, Hanzo spoke up, “They’re worried about a second explosion — ” He shared a look with his brother. “Because it was a bomb?”</p><p>“What?” Gabriel shook his head. “That’s — No. That’s crazy.”</p><p>But outside the window, the lab coats and scrubs of hospital staff were pushing against the tide of people pressing in to get a look. The police held a swaying line. Genji parked on a side street, unable to get any closer. As Gabriel climbed out, the din that had been muffled through the windows became a roar. There were so many voices, high pitched and concerned. Angry and rushed. The very air thrummed with cresting waves of panic. A baby’s cry drew Gabriel’s eye to a gowned woman standing barefoot in the grass as she held the wailing bundle of blankets to her chest.</p><p>Ice plunged into Gabriel’s stomach as he was struck with the realization of how much vulnerability was inside the hospital. “Oh God.” He worked his way through the crowd, his heart pounding and his head spinning. He skirted the yellow police tape. The officers were barking orders to “Get back!” but the crowd only pressed closer and the line strained with fear-fueled anger swelling on both sides.</p><p>Firetrucks and ambulances were pulled right onto the lawn, adding to the barrier, but with so much swarming staff and officers, Gabriel slipped under the caution tape and melded in with his scrub wearing co-workers. A doctor was yelling at an officer, arguing about needing a clear line to move patients while the officer shouted back about everyone needing to “Stay put.”</p><p>As long Gabriel kept moving, no one batted an eye at him.</p><p>His steps took him closer to the morgue, drawn by his desire to know the source of the budding chaos.</p><p>“Was it a bomb?” A reporter and her cameraman had wormed their way past the front line and toward the second line blocking access to the damaged building. She’d been caught by an officer and as he tried to herd her back, she shoved a microphone in his face. “Have they found a second bomb?”</p><p>“Get back behind the line,” was the officer’s growling reply.</p><p>The reporter didn’t budge. “Do you know how many are dead? Do you know the identity of the bomber? Have they made demands? Released a manifesto?”</p><p>“Even if I knew anything, I wouldn’t tell — <i>hey!</i>”</p><p>Gabriel froze where he’d been attempting to slip by while the officer was distracted. Livid, the officer focused his frustration on him. His snarl was filled with fire as he approached, one hand on the butt of his holstered gun.</p><p>Unease stiffened Gabriel’s spine. He raised his hands, palms out and harmless.</p><p>“Behind the line,” the officer snapped, pointing at the yellow tape. He was shorter than Gabriel by a foot and young enough to be decidedly impulsive. The shimmer of metal on his chest read “C. Pierce”.</p><p>“I’m Doctor Gabriel Reyes,” Gabriel said, not daring to reach into his pocket where he’d stuffed his lanyard and badge. “I’m the medical examiner and that— “ he did point to the building where he worked. “—is my morgue.”</p><p>Uncertainty crossed Pierce’s face as he sized up Gabriel’s broad frame. He eased back a step and grabbed at his shoulder radio to report Gabriel’s claim. In the brief pause, the news crew jumped forward. The halo of lights on the camera stabbed into Gabriel’s eyes. He blocked the light with a raised hand and blinked away the stars exploding in his eyes.</p><p>“Dr. Reyes — why did you bomb the hospital? What kind of statement are you making?” Her microphone narrowly missed knocking against his chin.</p><p>“The fuck—“ He shoved the camera back along with the microphone. “I didn’t do this!”</p><p>“Do you know who did?”</p><p>“No!”</p><p>Officer Pierce caught his elbow, but bellowed at the reporter. “Back behind the line. <i>Now<i>. I won’t say it again.” Gabriel found himself hauled toward a group of police cruisers, closer to the wreckage, but the flashing lights did little to illuminate the scene. A pair of firemen, carrying some kind of brace, passed by and Gabriel glanced nervously at the two floors above the morgue.</i></i></p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Detective Amari?” Pierce called out to the suited woman leaning against one of the squad cars. Her long, tight braid of dark hair was shot through with silver. “This is your guy.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Gabriel Reyes?” Her dark eyes assessed him in one quick head to toe glance.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Shrugging his arm free of Pierce’s hold, Gabriel motioned toward the damaged building. “What happened?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Amari nodded to Pierce and he left. She waited until he was at the yellow line, herding back the persistent reporter and cameraman, then gestured for Gabriel to follow her toward an unmarked car.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Dr. Reyes,” she said while opening the back door. “You want answers. So do I.” Her smile was tired as she waved for him to sit inside. “I won’t beat around the bush. We’ve both had a long night. I need you to come with me to the station to answer some questions.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel leaned back, his heels digging in. “Am I under arrest?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“No, but time is of the essence, so please don’t force my hand.” A hardness touched at her brown eyes and despite being such a slight woman, Gabriel had the distinct impression she knew just how to subdue a man twice her size. With a glance over his shoulder at the turbulent, dark sea of activity, Gabriel conceded to the thought that he wouldn’t be able to get closer to the morgue any time soon.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>He sighed and climbed into the car. It was a brief, quiet ride. Gabriel made sure to text his whereabouts to Hanzo, who immediately responded, advising him to not say anything until he could arrange a lawyer for him.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <tt><b>Gabe:</b> I’m not under arrest</tt>
    </i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <tt><b>Hanzo:</b> They always say that. Say nothing.</tt>
    </i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <tt><b>Gabe:</b> Won’t that just make me look guilty?</tt>
    </i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>
      <tt><b>Hanzo:</b> Do not argue with me on this</tt>
    </i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Instead of an interrogation room and cold shoulder tactics, Ana led him to a small, unused office and offered him a mug of coffee. He inhaled it and sagged into the cushioned seat, one elbow resting on the nearby desk to keep his head upright. Despite the caffeine, his eyes begged to remain closed. He was eager to be done with the whole affair. Forsaking Hanzo’s council, he told Ana as much as he dared while omitting the details of his dreams, his flirtations with Jack, and the reason why his wrist was wrapped in gauze. Ana had glanced at it, but didn’t press him for an explanation. She listened, nodding solemnly along like a priest taking a confession.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“So it was just you, Hanzo Shimada, and Jack Morrison in the morgue today?” She asked for clarification.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“As far as I know, yes.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“How well do you know Hanzo?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Well enough,” he said, struggling to keep an edge from his tone.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>He hadn’t noticed her bring anything other than the coffee into the office, but like a practiced cue, she opened a file that had been waiting in her lap. Gabriel bristled and closed his fingers around his mug. “Hanzo didn’t do this.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Are you aware of Hanzo’s police records?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“<i>Yes</i>,” he bit at her insinuation. “I am aware of it. I’m the one who hired him.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“So you know about—”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Yes! I know he had a break down — <i>years ago</i>.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“And it involved a gun.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>He grit his teeth. “No one got hurt.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana held his gaze, letting the silence squeeze at Gabriel until he felt compelled to break its hold. His hand cut through the air, shucking away her accusations. “He’s changed since then. He’s all meditation, tea, and incense now. He didn’t do this.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“And Jack Morrison?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“He’s…” Gabriel frowned. “He’s new.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Having spent most of the night debating whether or not Jack was even real, Gabriel couldn’t say he knew the guy. He was attractive, clever, and confident enough to hold his own. The veil, however, acted oddly around him, which in turn made Gabriel hesitant to claim he understood Jack. He seemed like a good guy; the honest sort that just wanted to help. Gabriel wanted to defend Jack, but there were enough unknown variables to cast a shadow of doubt over his thoughts.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “He doesn’t strike me as homicidal.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Did you know he’s ex-military?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>No, he hadn’t known, but he could have learned that fact on his own. Through scars, habits, and attitude. It could have been a guess he put together himself and it irked him to be handed the information so freely. Gabriel shook his head. “Are you implying that being in the military makes him more likely to be a psychopath?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana shrugged. “I’m saying he’s had access to certain, delicate information.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Like how to make bombs?” Gabriel mocked her reasoning.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She merely smiled at him as if she had an ace hidden up her sleeve. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. Something was there, but he was missing it. He carefully studied Ana’s face, but nothing other than her casual confidence jumped out at him.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel mimicked her nonchalant shrug. “Sounds like you know his history better than I do.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“What <i>do</i> you know about Jack?” Ana tossed Hanzo’s file onto the desk.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I just met the guy today.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“You didn’t interview him?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I — no. I’ve been busy with the Lacroix case.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana hummed thoughtfully and Gabriel belatedly noticed she didn’t have a file for Jack. “Do you know anyone that might want to hurt you?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>He chuckled, too tired to curb his reaction. He tended to rub people the wrong way, on purpose, but he didn’t think he was detestable enough for someone to go to the absurd length of trying to blow him up. “I doubt my ex-wife learned bomb making in her spare time just to spite me. Alimony does that just fine.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Brushing aside the more obvious choices of enemies, Gabriel began picking through the names and faces he’d met over the last year. The memories mixed with the slack expressions of the dead. Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose, unable to separate the dead from the living. “I don’t know anyone that would do this.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“The ‘I don’t know’s are not going to hold over well with the FBI.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel’s shoulders slumped.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Irritation darkened Ana’s quiet chuckle. “I wager they’ll be here by the end of the day to swoop up the case.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Unless you solve it first,” He ventured, wistful to the idea of not having to endure another round of interrogations.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana offered him a rueful smile before cutting away the wandering line of conversation. “Let’s pretend the intent of the bomb wasn’t to hurt anyone, but instead it was designed to destroy something. Evidence, perhaps. You mentioned the Lacroix case?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Yes, but that’s done and over with. Everything pertaining to that case has been digitized. I don’t have Gerard’s body anymore. It was released and put in the ground weeks ago.” His hands gestured helplessly at the room. “All the samples are with the lab. The only thing left is—” Gabriel’s expression fell along with arms.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“What?” Ana prompted.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel swallowed around the sharp lump forming in his throat. “We had a John Doe in the cooler. I never got to his autopsy.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Do you think it’s related to the case?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>The case had all the evidence needed to convict Amelie Lacroix for murder. A cut and dry case as far as Gabriel was concerned, but her prestige and expensive lawyers kept prolonging the trail. The city was wrapped up in the drama of it, torn between their love for the ballet star, Amelie, and her belated husband, Gerard, who had been favored in the upcoming run for mayor. “The trial keeps getting pushed back,” he said out loud, trying to decide if it was a clue worth wiggling into the puzzle.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Money tends to do that,” Ana said.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Having seen the influence of money on the scales of justice one too many times, Gabriel nodded in agreement. Usually it came out in lackluster sentences the judges gave to the wealthy. This time, however, “One of the jurors didn’t show up.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Bribed? Intimidated?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Missing.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Usually it’s the witness that goes missing.” Ana drummed her fingers on her knee.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel rubbed at his brow. “Hanzo would be better to talk about all this. It’s his father’s firm that’s —” He paused as the worrisome thought seeded itself. “Do you think they were after Hanzo, not me? As a threat to his father?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I’ve considered it.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“That means Genji is in danger too.” Gabriel fumbled for his phone.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana’s hand settled over his arm. “They’re in protective custody.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“In the same room?” Gabriel huffed out a laugh.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Should I be concerned?” Ana peered at him.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel shook his head, paused, then shrugged. “Maybe, but maybe it’s also the best thing anyone can do for them.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>A beat passed before Ana steered the conversation back around. “Tell me again why you weren’t in the morgue even though you were supposed to be on shift?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Dismay pulled at Gabriel’s features. “I had to get out of there before I lost my mind. It’s been a long week.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“But you didn’t go home. You invited your co-workers out with you. Why did you want them to leave early too?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I don’t know.” Gabriel whined as much as he grumbled the words. Ana’s brow ticked upward and Gabriel’s hand shot upward in exasperation. “I invited Hanzo because I owe it to him for putting up with my shit. And Jack…” An embarrassed flush crawled up Gabriel’s neck. “He’s new and I wanted to know him better.” His cheeks and ears were burning and he had to clear his throat before he could hastily add, “Since we’ll be working together.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana chuckled, a soft yet chiding sound. “Jack has that effect on people.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel squinted at her. “You know him.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She tapped the side of her nose and winked. “We served together and, thankfully, I know him much better than you.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I didn’t think he had anything to do with the bombing,” Gabriel muttered in his defense. In his mind, the veil’s cryptic whispering and apparent unease toward Jack was an unrelated issue. It didn’t reflect on Jack’s moral character. He didn’t think so, anyway.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“If it’s any consolation,” Ana said in an airy tone of a knowing mother. “I think he wants to get to know you too.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Adrenaline spiked through him, but other than a stilted breath, Gabriel did little but glance side-long at Ana. The gentle teasing didn’t read as a trap. It sounded more like a good friend having a quiet laugh at an inside joke. Nothing like a detective angling to earn his confidence. The distinction was fuzzy and it alarmed Gabriel to know how far he’d lowered his guard in her presence.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Why do you say that?” He asked with a casual indifference.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Because he’s been sitting in the hall this whole time. I assume he’s waiting to give you a ride?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel’s head snapped toward the door. He half raised from his seat, grinning, before he remembered the situation at hand. He sat down and composed his face into neutrality as if his nerves weren’t twitching with an anticipation to open the door. His gaze swiveled back to Ana. “Are we done here?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Ana passed him a card with her number on it. “It goes without saying that you should remain local and available. Also, call me if you remember anything pertinent to the case.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She hardly lifted her arm, to wave him off, before he was across the room and opening the door. Jack sat on a bench a few feet down the hall, asleep. Gabriel shut the door with a crisp snap, startling Jack awake. He jerked upright, mumbling incoherently, and rubbed a hand over his face before his hazy, blue eyes found Gabriel.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Hey.” Gabriel smiled.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>A shy, fondness touched at Jack’s returning smile. “Hey.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel’s heart fluttered like an excited bird preening against the bars of his cage. He closed the distance while Jack stood and stretched out his back. “I heard you’re taking me home?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Regret washed over Jack’s expression. “Not exactly. We have to go back to the hospital.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“What? Why?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“The scene investigator wants you to walk him through the morgue layout,” Jack explained in an apologetic tone.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel’s first impulse was to complain about his lack of sleep and how he wanted to go home, but he was curious to see what was left of the morgue. Gabriel leaned away from Jack, disinclined to go without putting up some form of protest. “And if I say no?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>The easy smile Jack gave him in response was like a bewitching spell. “I’ve been told I’m rather good at sweet talk.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Gabriel’s gaze drifted from Jack’s promising blue eyes to his beguiling smile. “And how would you convince me to go?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>Jack snorted, soft and with clear amusement, and didn’t take the bait. He checked the time on his wristwatch. “I’ll start by offering to get us some coffee?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gabriel drew in a slow breath, but his head continued to spin. It was no surprise to find the morgue blasted into an unfamiliar tangle of concrete and metal, but Gabriel hadn’t expected the sight of it to bore a hole through his chest. He drew in another deep breath, tasting the dust of gypsum and tang of old blood. This had been his home, the only place he felt like he belonged, and it had been violently gutted.</p><p>Metal braces, supporting the upper floors from collapsing, created a columned passageway that Gabriel wandered along. Equipment that had once been neatly stored now laid strew across the floor, shoved aside to make paths. His good suit had been reduced to rags. Papers fluttered and, while Gabriel didn’t stoop to look, he suspected his nest of paperwork had somehow survived the destruction. His hands hurt from trying to dig into the mess that had once been the closet, hoping to save his pictures, but like the people in the images, they were lost to him.</p><p>The sun was up, warming toward noon, and the light filtered through the broken wall to dapple over the fallen sections of cheap, ceiling tiles and busted remains of the hanging cabinets. Rubble crunched under Gabriel’s beaten sneakers as he peered out the hole punched through the wall. Rebar, exposed like scorched ribs, bent outward into the light. The gap was level with his head, just high enough above ground level to glimpse at the manicured lawn outside.</p><p>Several square, metal doors laid at his feet, fallen after they had impacted against the reinforced concrete. Turning, Gabriel stared across the room at the source of the blast. The light didn’t touch the cooler. It stopped several feet short, timid of the gaping hole of twisted metal that reeked of burnt flesh. The putrid scent clung to the air, sliding like oil over his tongue.</p><p>Inside the cooler, the veil coiled with silent fury. Gabriel’s gut twisted into a series of slithering knots as he neared. It was unusual to find the veil so thickly gathered in one spot. It blanketed all things, resting over the world like a sheet of gossamer silk spun through with threads of wind. At times it bunched together, like the velvety drapes of a theater curtain, but no snag kept it snared for long.</p><p>“This is the source of the blast.” The scene investigator, a stout, tired man by the name of Levins, held a clipboard with a sketching on it. A camera swung from his forearm as scratched at his bearded chin. His nose scrunched as a wandering breeze stirred up the stench. “How many bodies were in there?”</p><p>The smears along the wall, the ones that Gabriel had come to think of as flung bits of baby food instead of what they really were, splatters of human remains liquefied by the blast, failed to provide numbers for a body count. The few parts that remained intact had already been gathered and carted out to be sorted through later.</p><p>“Five.” Gabriel stood where John Doe’s door had been, the epicenter of the explosion, and couldn’t help but wonder if the veil had been trying to warn him. That, or pull him through the other side. If he hadn’t left, the workers would have been picking up pieces of his body too.</p><p>“Anything unusual?” Levins asked.</p><p>For the last seven years, Gabriel’s life had been unusual and he was getting tired of trying to pick out the saner bits. Familiar claws of malice and ice dug into his nape, forcing his attention toward the back of the cooler where Mrs. Li stood, her eyes like chips of obsidian as she glared. The stitches along her abdomen were ripped, leaving a gaping, gory maw where her organs had once been.</p><p>“What?” Gabriel asked her.</p><p>“I asked if you saw anything unusual,” Levins repeated.</p><p>Gabriel stifled a deranged giggle. Tired as he was, he’d almost told Levins that the question had been meant for the seething corpse. The humor faded as a string of whispering slithered out of the dark. Gabriel turned as it passed, following the ghostly trail as it led to where Jack stood speaking to a woman from the CSU.</p><p>“Jack,” Gabriel called to him without thinking.</p><p>Those wonderful blue eyes lifted to acknowledge him. Gabriel beckoned him over and, with a nod and a brief word of parting to the woman, Jack obliged. As Jack and Levins greeted each other, Gabriel’s thoughts found traction where his mind had been absently steering him. “Did you bring in the John Doe?”</p><p>Jack nodded.</p><p>“I didn’t get a chance to read his file,” Gabriel admitted with a touch of embarrassment. Normally, at the beginning of his shift, the first order of business was to review all the cases. Instead, Gabriel had fallen asleep. Hanzo must have read them over, but he was tucked away with Genji in some unknown safe house.</p><p>“Found in a vacant construction lot in the early morning. No I.D. and his prints didn’t hit in the system.” Jack tilted his head back, his eyes dimming as he read over the details noted in his memory. “Blonde. White. Average height. He looked dressed for a night out. Smelled faintly of alcohol. No signs of trauma, but he had fresh stitching along his side.” Jack traced a line on his own abdomen. “My guess was he might have mixed a night of drinking with his pain medication, stumbled into the empty lot, fell into a coma and died…”</p><p>Jack rubbed at his chin. “Block security found him sometime after someone else had already emptied his pockets.” He finalized his assessment with a shrug. “What are you thinking?”</p><p>“I’m thinking he was the bomb.”</p><p>Jack’s eyes widened. “I didn’t notice anything — nothing like ticking or blinking lights. Nothing <i>bomb</i> shaped.”</p><p>Levins sighed wistfully. “Would have been nice if you had.”</p><p>A troubled crease formed between Jack’s brows and Gabriel lightly nudged him before saying, “You should tell Ana what you remember about John Doe.”</p><p>“That’s just—” Jack paled to a shade of green. “Wrong. Who would—” He shook his head with disgust while he called Ana, stepping away when she answered.</p><p>Gabriel turned back to the cooler, relieved to find Mrs. Li gone. He searched the dark corners just to be sure. The description Jack had given on John Doe was unnervingly familiar. Blonde hair, white skin. Nothing rare or distinct, but Gabriel had dreamed of such a man lying on the tray when he’d opened the cooler.</p><p>“Could have meant to blow up the construction site,” Levins mused, standing next to Gabriel and eyeing the wreckage. “But got the timing wrong.” He shook his head. “It’s damn odd to bomb a morgue.”</p><p>Gabriel’s lips thinned over the thought of how much odder it was to use a body as a bomb casing. “Doesn’t make sense to me either.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging. Questions stirred on his tongue, but he didn’t have the energy to pursue them. He rubbed at his temple as he asked, “Need anything else from me?”</p><p>Levins checked his clipboard and shook his head. “Not unless you want to swap theories.”</p><p>“Only thing I want to do right now is sleep.”</p><p>“I’ll be in touch if I think of anything.”</p><p>Gabriel nodded and sought out Jack. He found him on the outskirts of the scene, phone to his ear while he prodded his shoe tip at the chunks of concrete scattered across the hospital lawn. As he “uh-huh”-ed and “yeah”-ed into the phone, he lined up the pieces according to their size.</p><p>When he noticed Gabriel, he smiled and ended the call. The carefree gesture drew Gabriel in like a fire on a cold night. He stepped closer and implored Jack with a tired look. “Take me home?”</p><p>Jack squeezed his elbow in reassurance then cast a look over the parking lot. “Where’s your car?”</p><p>“I ride the bus.” A wry smile touched at Gabriel’s lips. “I have the tendency to—”</p><p>“Fall asleep behind the wheel?”</p><p>Jack bit down on the corner of his lip as he dodged Gabriel’s questioning look. The accident had been several years ago, forgotten by most people. Jack’s assumption was spot on and shouldn’t have surprised Gabriel as much as it did.</p><p>“Yeah,” Gabriel reluctantly admitted.</p><p>“So you sleep on the bus?” Jack’s eyes twinkled as he scrunched his nose. “That’s gross.”</p><p>Gabriel indulged Jack’s teasing with a weak smile.</p><p>It was past noon by the time Gabriel stepped into his apartment, ushering Jack inside without thinking. Autopilot took him through the habitual motions, or it at least got him as far as locking the door, toeing off his shoes, and shrugging out of his jacket before his brain fizzled out. Clutching his house keys, Gabriel stared blankly at the dark stretch of hallway leading to his bedroom.</p><p>Images of the wrecked body cooler flickered through his thoughts and the teasing edge of a nightmare beckoned to him. The blessed idea of sleep warped into a promise of restless, bloody whispers.</p><p>Gabriel jumped when Jack touched his elbow.</p><p>“Sorry,” Gabriel sighed as the quiet apartment came back into focus. “Usually I shower before I go to bed but…” With a heavy arm, he gestured at the world in general, not entirely sure what he meant to convey with the motion. He propped himself against the wall to keep from sinking to the floor. The sleep train was boarding and he was on the platform, clutching his ticket and struggling with how to bid farewell to Jack.</p><p>Jack’s fingers curled around the keys and coaxed them out of Gabriel’s slackening grip. They hit the floor somewhere near the door, but Gabriel didn’t much care as Jack pressed into him, pinning him against the wall with an unhurried kiss. It was like a warm fire after hours spent out in the pouring rain. The comfort of home after a long, hard day. A love worn soft and flexible by years of fond use.</p><p>It buzzed along Gabriel’s nerves, melting away the stress, but also easing him toward sleep. A tremble shook his arm as he carded fingers through Jack’s hair. The heat of desire was there, like a banked fire, but he didn’t have any fuel left to turn it into a blaze. The dampers were closed and he was slowly suffocating.</p><p>“Jack,” Gabriel whispered as kisses were lazily trailed down the side of his throat. A feeble spark trickled down Gabriel’s spine, fizzling out before his body could kindle it into a hungry flame. “We don’t — I <i>want to</i>, but — “ He balled his hands into Jack’s shirt. “I’m so fucking tired.”</p><p>Jack’s kisses continued, reassuring where they lingered. He wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s waist and tugged him away from the wall. “I’m putting you to bed.”</p><p>With slow, side-to-side, dancing steps, they moved to the bedroom. The covers were drawn back and, as Gabriel laid on the sheets, a gorgeous man kneeling between his legs, he was both disappointed and relieved that all Jack was doing there was unlacing his shoes.</p><p>The texture of the ceiling swam in and out of focus. A pair of black-out curtains kept out most of the daylight, but what little came in sent dancing, gray shadows across the walls. The bed dipped as Jack crawled over him to push his shirt up, then peel it off his arms. Gabriel returned the favor once his arms were free. Jack’s shirt came away like tissue paper lifted from a gift bag. Gabriel held the shirt aloft, his eyes roaming over Jack’s bare, toned chest, and snickered.</p><p>“What?” Jack asked as his hands paused over the task of sliding his belt free.</p><p>Gabriel traced a line through the air around Jack’s neck. “I sorta expected to find dog tags.”</p><p>“Yeah?” The belt came away, dropping to the floor. Jack shrugged, then smiled. “What gave it away?”</p><p>“Ana.”</p><p>Jack barked out a laugh and shook his head. “And here I was looking forward to having my fortune read.”</p><p>“I’ll find other secrets,” Gabriel pulled him down. As Jack’s weight settled over him, warm and reassuring, Gabriel memorized the definition of Jack’s arms with fingertips. Their lips came together in a firm, hungry kiss.</p><p>A soft whine curled in Gabriel’s chest. He wanted so much more, but his body wasn't getting the memo. Jack was hard against him, his hips rolling forward with a mindless need. The kiss deepened. Gabriel sank back and soaked in the attention of the feverish need and wandering hands.</p><p>He floated, content with the closeness, up until the point Jack palmed him through the briefs. Gabriel squirmed and flushed with embarrassment that he wasn’t even half-hard. His arms tightened around Jack’s shoulders as he mumbled, “He’s tired too.”</p><p>Jack smiled against Gabriel’s cheek. “Want me to wake him?”</p><p>The hand working him held promise, the sluggish coil of heat in his gut was building. But it was a single, glowing ember in the dark. Blistering to touch, but failing to warm him through. Gabriel caught Jack’s hand and shifted it to rest against his sternum.</p><p>“I’d rather it be a more mutual exchange,” Gabriel whispered.</p><p>“I don’t mind,” Jack said, his hand sliding back down.</p><p>Gabriel stopped it before it could pass his navel. “I mind.” Jack’s hand redirected to his hip. A tension wove into the quiet and Gabriel’s heart sank as Jack's weight shifted to settle next to him. Gabriel turned toward him, “I’m sorry—”</p><p>Jack shushed him with a light kiss. “I’m tired too.”</p><p>The fingers caressing his scarred cheek soothed some of the doubts worming through his chest. Gabriel hooked an arm and leg over Jack. In the dim light, Jack smiled at him and set a hand on top of Gabriel’s thigh, accepting the compromise.</p><p>Gabriel laid his head on Jack’s chest, closed his eyes, and listened to the metronome beat of his heart. He brushed his fingers along Jack’s sternum with idle thoughts as his mind sank deeper into the dark pool of sleep. Back and forth, he traced a line. Down. Up.</p><p>The twisted hole of metal and death beckoned to him. The cooler was gone, but the voices remained. The veil growled, caught in the bramble of wreckage, and Gabriel felt the foolish urge to free it. A wind sighed against his ears and Gabriel strained to listen, unable to decipher a warning or a beckoning in the ghostly murmuring.</p><p>Did he know John Doe?</p><p>A blurry face swam in and out of focus in Gabriel’s mind as his fingers traced a familiar line, as he wondered whose hands had pushed into John Doe’s abdomen, pulling out his guts and replacing them with explosives.</p><p>“Are you doing an autopsy on me?” Jack’s chest shook with repressed laughter.</p><p>In a flare of panic, Gabriel jerked his hand away. He held it up to the faint light and, as his arm shook, he examined it for traces of blood. The veil tickled at his ear.</p><p>
  <i>”You killed me.”</i>
</p><p>“No,” Gabriel whispered.</p><p>Chuckling, Jack took Gabriel’s hand and guided it to rest over his heart. “It’s fine.”</p><p>Gabriel cast a wary glance around the room. His heart shifting like a spooked horse. Nothing leapt from the shadows, but Gabriel couldn’t shake off the lingering sense of unease. He curled more protectively around Jack, his eyes weary but refusing to close and allow the shadows to creep closer.</p><p>Jack squeezed Gabriel’s knee, untroubled, but a burr of quiet caught between them. Jack’s breathing was measured, softer than a whisper, and a worry grew in the gradual tensing of his muscles. It was the edge of a budding secret. Jack’s fingers dug lightly into Gabriel’s thigh as, in the dark, the timing was ripe enough to let it bloom.</p><p>“I have a confession to make,” Jack whispered at the ceiling.</p><p>Gabriel rubbed his cheek against Jack’s shoulder to show he was listening.</p><p>“We’ve met before,” Jack said.</p><p>Gabriel went very still while Jack’s warm chest continued to rise and fall. His heart ticked away in the background.</p><p>“I recognized you the moment I saw you.” The soft, short laugh Jack huffed held a tinge of bitterness. “But you had no clue who I was. Not that I can blame you for it. You weren’t all there when we met.”</p><p>The secret wasn’t unfurling to reveal a beautiful surprise of colored petals. It was a thing with thorns and razor-edged leaves laced with poison. It smelled of sulfur and rot. Gabriel’s hand tightened around Jack’s bicep as the veil stirred with a mocking chorus of tittering.</p><p>“Jack,” Gabriel warned.</p><p>Either not hearing the edge to Gabriel’s tone, or misunderstanding it, Jack hastened to explain himself. “I used to work as a first responder, years ago, and it was the end of my shift. A call came through about a car accident. Sam, my partner, wanted to pass it off to another unit, but we were the closest. And — it was you.”</p><p>Jack passed a hand over his mouth. “You were fading, fast, but — I saved you. I don’t — “ Jack shook his head while motioning at the remembered impossibility of their meeting. “I don’t know why, or how, but you must have heard me calling to you, because you came back.”</p><p>Gabriel remembered the smell of the smoke and the taste of blood in his mouth, but the man that had spoken to him through the daze was fuzzy along the edges, more of a mirage than a man.</p><p>“It’s kinda funny, and sad, but I was really hoping you might swing by the station after you got better.” Jack’s chuckle was directed at himself. “For months I daydreamed about how you’d want to take me out to dinner as a thank you.”</p><p>Guilt snagged in Gabriel’s chest. His life had taken a downward swing after his accident and it hadn’t even occurred to him to thank those responsible for saving him.</p><p>“This is what they call serendipity, isn’t it?” Jack joked.</p><p>Gabriel, his throat tight, coiled around Jack. It wasn’t serendipity. There was no series of pleasant flukes that had occurred to bind them closer and closer together. The path leading up to that moment was a twisted wreck of blood and smoke.</p><p>Jack shouldn’t have brought him back.</p><p>Death came for them all and was patient enough to wait out the kink in time Jack had created by pulling a claimed life free of the veil. But it didn’t mean Death didn’t hold a grudge, that it might take measures to prevent Jack from stealing another life. That, in all that had happened, Gabriel was merely a pawn being nudged forward in a dangerously clever gambit.</p><p>“How many lives have you saved?” Gabriel asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the truth.</p><p>Jack’s shoulder shifted against Gabriel’s chest in an unseen shrug. “During my whole life? I’ve lost count. And some of them probably don’t count. I just happened to be there.”</p><p>Like some angel sewn into skin, Jack was warmth and golden light, wherever he went, the veil rippled. It receded, exposing half drowned souls like seashells hidden under the waves. Jack merely had to walk along the shores to find them, pick them up, and unknowingly rack up the I.O.Us with Death.</p><p>An absurd thought, one born from a tired mind rapidly unspooling into a mess of maddening, looping knots. Yet a fear spread through Gabriel like frost crawling across a window. The veil knew, but it was unclear whether it meant to warn him or it was simply buzzing in anticipation of events yet to unfold. But it knew. A debt was owed.</p><p>Gabriel pressed a kiss to Jack’s shoulder with a silent vow to protect him.</p><p>The futility of such a promise haunted him into the sinking dark.</p><p>Long, shadowy arms hooked around him and pulled him down and down and down.</p><p>He settled against the bottom like a stone finding the sandy floor of a deep ocean. Thoughts stirred around him, drifting up then spreading thin to become a senseless haze of murky wonders. The current of limbo lifted him up, down, never one way or the other, always caught in between. It was a strange and familiar place, the closest he ever came to sleep.</p><p>Whispering slithered through the dark like a shark passing through the still waters just beyond his senses. The waters shifted, dropping several degrees, and fears of the unknown prickled at his skin. A distorted echo reached his ears.</p><p>
  <i>”He’s here.”</i>
</p><p>“Who?” Gabriel asked.</p><p>His feet touched the bottom, startling the shadows. They jostled him as they rushed past. He twisted about as the voices scraped at his ears. His heart jumped with alarm. A brilliant sliver of light appeared, splicing open the dark and offering him a guided path to wakefulness.</p><p>Gabriel turned away from the assaulting light, instead peering to where the shadows had fled. As he focused, he sank back down, inch by inch, until the light was nothing but a star-like pinpoint above him.</p><p>Gray hands shot out of the dark and snared his wrist. Gabriel jerked back, but the bone-thin fingers dug viciously into his skin. Mrs. Li’s face emerged from the shadows, fierce and young again, her eyes depthless and as unforgiving as the iron in her grip. She pulled him deeper into the dark.</p><p>“Wait!” His arm screamed with pain as crimson welled up under her nails. “Let go!”</p><p>
  <i>”He’s too white.”</i>
</p><p>Her hands opened and he shot to the surface like a snapped rubber band. The top shattered like glass, in one great burst before softening into a tinkling rain. Gabriel swung his legs over the side of the bed. A thin sheet of sweat coated his skin from the fearful rush of being flung skyward.</p><p>He gripped the edge of the mattress for stability as he eyes raked the room. A band of light danced across his face. The black out curtains billowed, filling with a breeze sneaking in from the cracked window. The sky outside had turned into the burnt orange of a setting sun.</p><p>Jack must have opened the window.</p><p>
  <i>Jack.</i>
</p><p>Gabriel’s heart leapt into his throat as he splayed a hand over the empty space next to him. The sheets still held a touch of warmth. The curtain flapped, stiff but not heavy enough to stop the errant breeze from chilling the sweat along Gabriel’s skin. With a deliberate slowness, Gabriel shifted his gaze to the floor, relieved to find two sets of clothing there.</p><p>The tension torquing at Gabriel’s spine released but the spiderweb tendrils of the nightmare clung on. The sound of running water reached his ears. Gabriel squinted, then lifted a hand to rub away the crust of sleep from his eyes. A sharp pain halted the motion. Gabriel hissed as he eyed the gauze encircling his wrist and the fresh spots of red seeping through.</p><p>“Jack?” Gabriel’s voice croaked, barely a whisper.</p><p>For an instant, Mrs. Li’s sharp fingers dug into the tendons of his wrist, and Gabriel sucked in a sharp breath while clamping a hand over the gauze. Nothing there.</p><p>“Jack?” His voice was stronger, but echoed with a note of distress. “I think I popped my stitches.”</p><p>Squeezing his wrist, Gabriel shuffled into the bathroom just outside his room. The sound of running water was louder, coming from the kitchen down the short hall. Gabriel squinted as he turned on the dome light. He rifled through the contents of the mirror cabinet until he found a box of steri strips. He closed the mirror, began unwinding the gauze, but froze after loosening the first loop.</p><p>Hesitantly, Gabriel opened the mirror again. Slower. He paused when he saw what his eyes had seen but what his mind had been slow to register. In the reflection, angled just so, Gabriel could see down the hall and into the kitchen. The evening light came in through the living room windows and stretched across the wooden floor boards. It gave the wood a golden hue and wasn’t shy in the way it deepened the wine red tones of pooling blood. Jack’s pale arm was visible from around the corner, jutting out like he was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.</p><p>Gabriel shut his eyes, counted to three, and opened them.</p><p>It was all still there.</p><p>Gabriel repeated the action, twice, then viciously pinched at his thigh. Only afterward, with the images unchanged, did Gabriel accept its reality. The water ran and, beneath the white-noise of it, the kitchen floor creaked. Not a dream. Someone else was there, waiting, and Jack was—</p><p>Thrusting aside the panicked thought, Gabriel closed the mirror, his mind whirling while his fingers calmly finished unwrapping the gauze.</p><p>Gabriel searched the bathroom with his eyes alone, finding little promise in the items within reach. The closest weapon was a small set of scissors he used to trim his goatee. He opened the scissors into a cross shape before wrapping it in a towel and, by setting one handle against the sink and applying his weight, he was able to snap the pin holding the two blades together.</p><p>The blade didn’t glint as Gabriel examined it. It was a dark, gray metal; crude and dull compared to the scalpels he used at work, but it was a familiar tool in his hands.</p><p>A whispering, cold and dreadful, demanded his attention. Hiding the blade against his thigh, Gabriel stepped back into the hall, his head swiveling to the dark doorway of his bedroom. The words repeated, senseless, lost in translation as it passed from the veil to his ears. Urgent. It crooked into his mind and towed him closer.</p><p>“So, Jack, I was thinking,” Gabriel spoke over the sound of running water. His heart paced but remained steady in his chest as he ambled back into the bedroom. “We could go to dinner — a proper dinner.”</p><p>His hand clenched around the scissor blade. “No Hanzo, just you and me with some steaks and wine.”</p><p>He didn’t know what he was looking for, but knew it was somewhere in the bedroom. The steely resolve he’d clamped over his panic began to erode and a tremble shook his hands. Tears stung at his eyes. Jack was dead, or dying, in the kitchen and he was standing in the bedroom, staring at the blurry carpet as if trying to find the hidden object in a puzzle picture.</p><p>“Unless you’re not much for fine dining,” Gabriel added, funneling all the icy calm he had into keeping a level tone. “I also know a little place near the hospital that serves the best ribs you’ll ever eat.”</p><p>His eyes hinged on the discarded clothing strewn across the floor. A pair of cold lips brushed the back of his ear and pointed fingers dug into his oozing wrist. It guided him, directing his hand to his discarded scrubs. Gabriel turned out the pockets and found Ana Amari’s card.</p><p>“Unless you’re vegetarian,” Gabriel said, louder still to be heard, and picked up his phone to send a text to the number on the card. Another went out to Hanzo. “Which is unacceptable, by the way.” He dialed 911 and left the ringing phone on the nightstand. “What do you think, Jack?”</p><p> Jack’s arm still jutted from around the corner, unmoved. The pool of blood had stretched further, following the wood grains toward the fading sunlight. The water continued running. Dread pulled at Gabriel’s heart with hooked fingers. His pulse hammered in his ears as he walked, unhurriedly and with heavy steps, to the kitchen.</p><p>He kept his eyes up, refusing to fully acknowledge Jack’s slumped shape against the wall, but his eyes took it in anyway, noting the details with a single glance and snapping the pieces together into one clear image.</p><p>Jack had woken from the heat of sharing a bed and had wiggled free from Gabriel’s loose embrace to crack open the window. He’d quietly gone to the kitchen for a drink of water. His bare feet dull thumps against the floorboards. There the gunman had found him and had shot him in the chest. Jack had staggered, dropping his glass as he hit the wall. There he’d slid down, choking on his own blood, unable to shout an alarm.</p><p>The broken shards of glass bit into the sole of Gabriel’s bare feet as he stepped over Jack’s splayed legs. The gunman was expecting him, but seemed surprised by Gabriel’s bold approach. The pistol, fitted with silencer, went off, twice, before Gabriel sunk the scissor blade into the side of the man’s neck. One premeditated strike into the jugular, backed by a cold fury, was enough to end it.</p><p>The man was small and rendered helpless once Gabriel had his gun hand twisted aside. He sputtered, gripping wildly at his neck as Gabriel walked him backwards, trapping him against the counter. The makeshift blade grated against the man’s jaw bone, having slowly gravitated upward by Gabriel’s unrelenting anger.</p><p>He shoved the man to the floor, pulling the blade free as he did. Blood gushed over the hand the man held to his throat in a failed attempt to stem the bleeding. He sputtered and jerked and was gone in the matter of seconds. Only then, when the blood had inched toward Gabriel’s toes, when he was sure the man wouldn’t stir, did he rush to Jack’s side.</p><p>Jack was pale, his face too white, and his lips so blue. Gabriel tentatively planted his bloody palm against Jack’s chest. Barely warm, but the chest pressed back with shallow breaths smelling like rusted iron. His heart beat, delayed and weak.</p><p>“Jack?” The name trembled from Gabriel’s lips.</p><p>A hole, dark and gory, adorned Jack’s chest. Gabriel’s fingers hovered over the wound as his mind estimated the angle of entry, guessed at the organs that had been struck, and calculated how long it would take for Jack to die. The bullet had missed the heart and spine but had neatly pierced through his lung. Gabriel made a guess — <i>an educated guess</i> — and assumed blood was filling the pleural sac, the space in between the ribs and the lungs. Jack would die, either by suffocating when his lung collapsed, or when his heart seized because it didn’t have enough room to beat.</p><p>“Stay with me,” Gabriel whispered, pressing a frantic kiss to Jack’s bowed head, then rushed to grab tools. The other half of the scissors, some plastic tubing from an unused fish tank project, and the brown bottle of peroxide from the bathroom. He dumped the contents, along with a hastily grabbed bath towel, next to Jack.</p><p>It was only as he was frantically scrubbing his hands clean in the kitchen sink that he noticed the blood streaking down his chest in a thin, streaming line. Fresh. His own blood. Following the blood to the source, Gabriel found the hole in his shoulder and in the soft flesh above his hip. Seeing the wounds unleashed the pain that had been hiding in the wings of his adrenaline fueled frenzy.</p><p>Gabriel gripped the edge of the counter and sucked in a shaky breath. His vision tunneled down to pinpoints. The shot to his shoulder was — <i>dismissable</i>, but the hole in his guts worried him. He didn’t even want to begin guessing at what the bullet had ripped at while passing through. But, he had time. More than Jack. Gabriel refused to panic.</p><p>It took several deep breaths before he could push back the fear. He focused on the task and not the fact that he’d been shot or that fact that he had two men, dead and dying, on his kitchen floor and he didn’t know whether or not help was coming.</p><p>Saving a life was not something Gabriel had ever done, but he did know how bodies died and knew — in theory — what could have been done to maybe save a life. He also knew if he didn’t try something, despite his lack of experience, Jack would expire there on his kitchen floor.</p><p>Gabriel haphazardly doused the scissor blade in iodine before running his fingers along the dips between Jack’s ribs. <i>Not too deep</i>, Gabriel reminded himself as he eyed the length of the blade. About an inch, no more or he’d pierce another hole into Jack’s lung. He wanted to drain the blood from around Jack’s lung and heart. Maybe he could keep him alive long enough to get him to a hospital. Long enough to see those blue eyes before the light in them went out, or to feel those soft lips against his own in a final goodbye.</p><p>The dull point of the scissors pressed against skin. Gabriel took a deep, focusing breath and steadied his other hand over Jack’s sternum. In the unseen corners, the veil watched. Gabriel hesitated, uncertain, then pushed the blade into Jack’s chest with the confidence born of years of cutting into bodies. The hollow tubing replaced the blade and with a bit of starting suction, gravity did the rest, pulling the blood from around Jack’s struggling lungs.</p><p>Gabriel straddled Jack’s thighs and tilted his pale, listless face up to the warm, evening light. His skin was cool to the touch. Gabriel’s lips trembled as he bent close, turning his head to both hear Jack’s raspy breaths and feel them exhaled against his ear.</p><p>The flat eyes of the dead gunman stared at them from across the kitchen and a flash of fiery hatred burned through Gabriel. “I’ve given you a life,” he snarled. “Let me have this one. I’ve done your work. I am owed this.”</p><p>Death wouldn’t bargain. Never had. But it crept around the edges, listening, patient in its knowing.</p><p>“I’ll give you back all he’s taken,” Gabriel vowed, knowing better than to pray for mercy from a deaf god. He curled as tightly as he could around Jack and wished he could make a clean trade of it. He’d give his life in place of Jacks in a heartbeat, but there was an interest owed. “I’ll pay his debt, but only if you let him go.”</p><p>Gabriel closed his eyes as tears slipped down his cheeks. Jack’s body shuddered as he sucked in a breath, a deeper breath, and his graveled voice rattled out. It was soft, almost lost to the rustling of the veil, and caught between life and death.</p><p>
  <i>”Gabe…”</i>
</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hanzo looked — not mad, but — sour. It was the expression that crept over his face whenever he was on the witness stand and the lawyer questioning him began fumbling the case. Hanzo had a low tolerance for incompetence but, luckily, he had an excellent poker face. When Gabriel attempted such an impassive countenance, his scarred features twisted into the unfriendly scowl of an old bear about to maul off the face of a foolish hunter. Hanzo, however, turned into something beautiful; carved of stone, cold to the touch but stunning in its regal elegance.</p><p>The fact that some emotion was currently bleeding through Hanzo’s mask, turning his impassiveness into a faint snarl of reined annoyance, was clue enough to how dire the circumstances had become over the last several hours.</p><p>“They saw you on the news,” Hanzo growled, his tone low and even.</p><p>“Uh-huh,” Gabriel replied with the same lack of interest he’d shown the information the first two times Hanzo had lectured it to him.</p><p>“They aren’t after me, they’re after <i>you</i>.”</p><p>“Oh is <i>that</i> why I got shot?” Gabriel mocked.</p><p>While Hanzo silently seethed, Gabriel searched the hospital room for a decent pair of clothes, or at least something to wear besides the gown showcasing his naked ass. The surgeries had been simple; one to close the hole in his waist, the second to fish out the bullet lodged under his shoulder blade. Medication dulled the pain, but did nothing to move an irate Hanzo from his shuffling path.</p><p>“Gabriel,” Hanzo growled as his arms tightened across his chest. “Someone is trying to kill you.”</p><p>The standing cabinet had more blankets, slipper socks and — “Aha!” — a belted robe. Gabriel pulled it from the closet and struggled to get it around his shoulders with only one hand. His other hand tensed uselessly in the sling pinning his arm snugly to his chest. He got his free arm half way through the sleeve, but no amount of hopping and flipping at the fabric made it cover the rest of his body.</p><p>Hanzo slammed the cabinet door shut. “You’re not listening.”</p><p>“I am,” Gabriel grumbled, his shoulders slumping in defeat as the majority of the robe sank to the floor. “They killed the juror to stall the case, stuffed him with a bomb and sent him to me hoping to remove my testimony. When I was seen on the news, alive and not blown to bits, a gunman was sent to finish the job. That’s the current on-going theory, anyway. Now— “ Gabriel pointedly shook the robe in Hanzo’s direction. “Are you going to help me with this or not?”</p><p>Hanzo didn’t budge. “This is serious, Gabriel.”</p><p>“Which is why your dad has a guard posted outside my room.”</p><p>“My father,” Hanzo spat, his lip curling over the familial term. “Wants to protect his case, which involves you being alive long enough to present evidence, whether or not you cease to live afterward is none of his concern.”</p><p>“All I can do is prove Amelie killed her husband.” Gabriel waved the robe at the room in a motion of futility. “A tree in the forest, Hanzo, there’s something bigger going on than the case. Someone is going through a lot of trouble to keep her from going to jail. She <i>knows</i> something, but instead of silencing her, they’re trying to bury the case to appease her.” Stuck in the hospital bed, Gabriel had had hours to dwell over it all. “She must have insurance, information that would be leaked if she were killed, this is so much bigger than your dad’s pride.”</p><p>“You need to—”</p><p>“It’s out of our hands, Hanzo. I’m not going to stay in this room, cowering for my life, when — when — “ Drained from the effort it took to maneuver about the room and argue with Hanzo, Gabriel sat on the edge of his abandoned bed as a tremble wracked his limbs. The blood loss and mental strain of the last two days wasn’t helping. The robe hung limp over the edge of the bed, still caught around Gabriel’s one good arm. He implored Hanzo with a broken look. “Is he out of surgery?”</p><p>Hanzo’s lips firmed into a thin line. He looked away as he answered, “Yes.”</p><p>“And?” Gabriel prompted as his heart worried at the back of his ribs.</p><p>“Stable, but still unconscious. Until he wakes up, they won’t know how much brain damage he might have suffered.”</p><p>The back of Gabriel’s throat burned with a forming lump. “I need to see him, Han.”</p><p>Jack had looked the part of a corpse by the time the paramedics arrived and pried Gabriel off. The two medics had exchanged a surprised glance when they’d found a pulse in Jack’s throat. Gabriel had fought them, insisting he needed to stay with Jack, but they hadn’t allowed it. Jack had been whisked out the door, then nothing. Not until Hanzo arrived at the hospital an hour later, talking Gabriel down from the panicked edge he’d worked himself toward. Hanzo had assured him that Jack was still alive. Convinced him to cooperate with the staff trying to treat his wounds.</p><p>Then, when they were out of sight and earshot of the staff, Hanzo had cuffed his ear, muttering harshly in Japanese. It wasn’t a hard hit; just force enough to snap Gabriel from his manic state of mind. It’d cleared his thoughts just in time to answer the questions the police had for him regarding the dead man found in his apartment.</p><p>When their questioning turned suspicious, Hanzo had butted in with all the hellfire of a well-paid lawyer.</p><p>Afterward, Hanzo had left to gather all the information he could on the developing case, leaving Gabriel to dwell over the events in the disturbing quiet of his room. He kept coming back to a single, troubling thought. Death had not taken Jack; the deal was still on the table. The contract had been writ in the blood spilled across his kitchen floor, signed by the blade Gabriel had buried in the neck of the gunman.</p><p>Hanzo made a sharp motion with his hand, dismissing Gabriel’s imploring look, but also beckoning him closer. He seized the trailing robe and settled it over Gabriel’s wide shoulders. His expression remained pinched in a scowl, but his hands were quick and kind. After belting it off, Hanzo ran a critical eye over Gabriel’s pitiful state of dress.</p><p>“The nurses won’t let you stay with him,” Hanzo said in a half-hearted attempt to dissuade Gabriel’s stubbornness.</p><p>Gabriel adjusted the robe to better cradle his arm and also allow him to avoid the exasperation in Hanzo’s eyes. Any time spent with Jack sounded better than sitting around not knowing whether or not Death had honored the deal. Gabriel needed to see Jack with his own eyes, to touch him with his own hands. He needed to know if the veil was there, creeping over Jack with intentions of stealing him away.</p><p>“You have this look on your face… “ Hanzo trailed off, frowning.</p><p>Gabriel felt crazed and could only imagine how off kilter he must look. Bad, he figured, considering Hanzo had seen him in similar mental states and he never expressed such a level of concern. “After this,” Gabriel said with a rueful grin. “You have my permission to drug me and strap me to the bed.”</p><p>Hanzo snorted, unimpressed.</p><p>“And I’ll owe you another dinner,” Gabriel tacked on, but Hanzo remained unmoved by the offer. “Two? Another bottle of that expensive sake you like?” The grin fell away as Gabriel met Hanzo’s dark eyes. The material items were empty gestures. Gabriel’s gaze cut away. “A favor. I’ll owe you a favor.”</p><p>Hanzo’s expression didn’t change, but he did step out of the room and dismiss the guard with a harsh snap of Japanese.</p><p>Gabriel waited to poke his head out. “That was easy.”</p><p>“I told him my father needed to see him, immediately.”</p><p>“And what happens when he gets there?”</p><p>Hanzo smirked. “I get an angry phone call.”</p><p>Side aching, Gabriel shifted his weight and reached for Hanzo’s shoulder for support, but his hand was rebuffed. Hanzo walked away, only to return a moment later with a wheelchair. Gabriel grimaced and, with equal amounts of gratitude and annoyance, settled into the seat. He’d been swindled. The small, upward tick at the corner of Hanzo’s lips said it all. The wheelchair had been stashed close by, well before Hanzo set foot into Gabriel’s room. He’d known how things would play out and, while his help had always been free, he’d still haggled a price out of Gabriel.</p><p>“And here I told Detective Amari that you had left behind all your evil, lawyering ways,” Gabriel mused while tilting his head back to better see Hanzo’s smirk. “You’re both the best and the worst friend I’ve ever had.”</p><p>“Then you should know not to get on my bad side.”</p><p>“Oh, I know,” Gabriel toned with an air of innocence. “Genji’s told me.”</p><p>“Perhaps we’ll take the stairs instead of the elevator,” Hanzo casually threatened with a glance of narrowed eyes.</p><p>“Elevator’s fine.” Gabriel raised his hands in a show of surrender.</p><p>The rest of the trip elapsed in silence. Gabriel worried the cloth belt between his fingers, curbing the urge to glance at every nurse they passed. With the recent explosion, the hospital was still buzzing with activity. There were more people there to visit loved ones and each idle corner was tucked with clusters of staff swapping embellished stories of what they had been doing when the bomb had gone off. No one took more than a glancing notice of a tired man being wheeled down the hall.</p><p>As they rounded a corner, Gabriel’s brows shot up with surprise upon spotting Genji perched on the counter of the nurses's station. His hands were moving with an artful telling of a story that had the present nurses enraptured. Genji, unlike his stony faced brother, was a compelling mix of flirtations and playful smiles.</p><p>“Don’t,” Hanzo warned when Gabriel looked back at him with a question teetering on the tip of his tongue.</p><p>Over the turned heads of the nurses, Genji winked at them. Gabriel grinned, but refrained from commenting on the bizarre twist of events. He’d invite Genji out for drinks in a heartbeat if it didn’t run the risk of Hanzo turning in his two-week notice the next day. The lull in the familial spat between the two Shimadas wouldn’t last but, for the moment, Gabriel needed the unexpected alliance to achieve his goal.</p><p>Floor to ceiling windows, lined with vertical blinds, made up the wall between the hall and the patient rooms. Gabriel peered into each room, but grew more dismayed by the stillness beyond the panes of glass. Over the sound of Hanzo’s steps, the hum and beeps of machines bolstered the eerie silence.</p><p>“This is the ICU?” Gabriel whispered, afraid to disturb the quiet that was thickening with the weight of the waiting veil.</p><p>“His odds are not good,” Hanzo answered the question Gabriel had hesitated to put into words.</p><p>They stopped outside a room at the end of the hall. The sliding door was open a couple inches. The quiet was the same, save for the hiss of a respirator. Gabriel rose to his feet to better stare at the wan figure on the bed. Jack was still pale and unmoving.</p><p>“Unless he wakes up, they plan to keep him intubated for a couple more days,” Hanzo said.</p><p>Gabriel pressed his forehead to the glass, his eyes glued to the movement of Jack’s chest. A machine forced it to rise and fall in a sickening imitation of life. Anger and despair burned like acid in Gabriel’s throat. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but the words burbling up his throat settled heavily on his tongue.</p><p>“Before all this.” Gabriel carefully met Hanzo’s gaze. “When I couldn’t decide whether or not he was real, I dreamed that he’d died.” It didn’t sound crazy, not yet, not until he considered the details. “He was in John Doe’s slot and I started cutting into him and — and he said I killed him. I can’t help but think the dream was right. If it weren’t for me, none of this would have happened.”</p><p>Hanzo studied him with a critical eye. “If not for you, we’d all be dead.”</p><p>“Hell of a fucking coincidence,” Gabriel snapped. He cast a nervous glance down the hall and lowered his voice. “I’ve been starting to think <i>I</i> might have master minded all of this. Maybe I haven’t been napping. Maybe I’ve been blacking out and something else has been—”</p><p>Hanzo scoffed. “And you think you hired a gunman to break into your apartment and shoot you both?”</p><p>“Maybe?”</p><p>“Stop.” Hanzo cut a hand through the air. “I will not listen to this. Go.”</p><p>Allowing no further argument on the subject, Hanzo headed toward the nurses’s station. Gabriel wasn’t ready to dismiss the idea of his lapse in sanity. He wasn’t foolish enough to chalk it all up to a stroke of luck. But all the other theories involved him having the power of premonition. For years he’d been torn believing he was connected to the other side, able to hear the words of the dead, while at the same time shying from the part of himself that wanted to get his head scanned, convinced that something had been knocked loose in the car wreck all those years ago and he’d been descending deeper into madness ever since.</p><p>The silence was somehow worse inside the room; the wheeze of the respirator louder. The air itself was thick, cloying like a hot, humid jungle. Gabriel stepped around the bed, angling to hide from the casual glance of a passing nurse. He pulled a chair close and listened to the roaring silence.</p><p>And the whispering.</p><p>Gabriel gripped Jack’s hand, but it was like trying to hold on to a warm bag of water. He pressed his fingers into Jack’s pulse. The beat was as unhurried as the swinging arm of a pendulum clock. The machines counted the seconds with soft beeps. None of it reassured Gabriel. Nothing pushed back the oppressive weight closing on the nape of his neck like a possessive hand.</p><p>“We made a deal,” Gabriel growled at the quiet.</p><p>His knees bumped against the bed as he scooted closer and slid the bed’s side rail down. He threaded his arm through the wires and tubes until he could rest a palm against the swell of Jack’s pec and feel his breaths and his beating heart. His fingers pressed dimples into Jack’s warm skin. Gabriel laid his head on the edge of the bed and stared at the crescent bruises under Jack’s closed eyes.</p><p>Perhaps, Gabriel thought as his lids drifted close, a second life needed to be given, to further solidify the deal. Then, maybe, Death would release its hold on Jack.</p><p>Gabriel’s eyes snapped open and he jerked upright. His heart raced as he searched the room for threats, but found everything as it had been. A woman’s laugh rang down the hall and the respirator hissed with an inhuman exhale. The corners of the room were dark and collecting with quiet. Gabriel clutched at Jack’s gown, but the stability Jack had once offered him had become a sinking chain.</p><p>He could let go and —</p><p>No. Jack had saved him — or damned him. Either way, Gabriel didn’t want to let go.</p><p>Gabriel’s gaze slid over to the cabinet hosting shelves of medical equipment. He knew the ways people died. How a careless action could set about a series of unfortunate events that ended with a body on his autopsy table. And, now, he had learned what it felt like to take a life with his own hands. He knew how warm the blood had been as it gushed out over his hand as he drove in the dull blade. Knew how calm he’d felt as the blood spread across the floor and, knew how the light looked as it went out from a man’s eyes.</p><p>The memory should have appalled him yet, as he reconstructed the scene in his head, Gabriel felt oddly at peace with his work. It was a victimless crime. The nameless gunman would not be missed. And, Gabriel’s mind spun further with zeal, there were countless others, men and women who had escaped justice in the courts despite the damning evidence stacked against them. Their names were in his records. Their faces burned into the bitter parts of his memory. They were living on time stolen from those they had killed.</p><p>Caught between the living and the dead, Gabriel had struggled to make sense of his life. He’d drifted like a raft carelessly left unmoored. But now the fog had cleared. He had a direction. A purpose.</p><p>Gabriel rested his cheek against Jack’s thigh. His eyes drifted close. The respirator hissed.</p><p>To save Jack, he’d become what he was always meant to be, what he was destined to become the moment he’d been pulled from the veil.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for joining me on an experimental piece. I wanted to try something different. It was meant to be short. I failed. But, it was always meant to end this way, a bit up in the air, still uncertain, and with question unanswered and... well, you can file your complaints in the comments below about the lack of sexy time. I was very conflicted about it myself, but also felt it didn't quite fit the flow of the story. I wrote a seperate r76 PWP piece to gift later as an apology, lol.</p><p>Once again I am sad to end a story. I will miss you all so terribly much.</p>
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